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Level 1

84 points

How migrate Thunderbird to Mac Mail?

Currently I use Thunderbird under Lion (10.7.4), with two acounts both of which are set up as POP accounts (one is Gmail, the other a university mail account), and in both of which I leave messages on the server. I have many old messages stored locally in many named folders, e.g., under my Gmail account in Thunderbird I have folders such as:

Inbox

Mac info

Miscellaneous

Travel

Thus I am not keeping the local copies inside the "Local Folders" area.

What is a reliable way to migrate my accounts ans locally-saved messages to the OS X Mail app? And I want both my accounts under Mac Mail to be IMAP instead of POP now.

Most of the information I've found about doing this sort of thing, including on this site, is on the order of 5 years old, and some of it even involves using the Rosetta-based Eudora Mailbox Clearn, which of course won't run under Lion.

An additional complication: I already have a Gmail IMAP account in Mac Mail, which unfortunately lists all the Gmail messages I've ever received! I want to have just those that at the moment of migration are in my Thunderbird Gmail mailboxes.

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.4), 3.4GHz Corei7, 16GB, SSD + 2T HD

Posted on Jul 31, 2012 5:45 PM

28 replies

murrayE Author

Level 1

84 points

Aug 1, 2012 9:45 AM in response to g_pirtle

I see that in Mac Mail under the Gmail account I have a folder "All Mail" (currently with over 6,000 messges). What exactly is the relationship of that to the folder Inbox > Gmail under the category INBOXES?

murrayE Author

Level 1

84 points

Aug 1, 2012 10:00 AM in response to murrayE

murrayE wrote:

g_pirtle wrote:

I think I understand your issue now. You may not want to do it this way, but this is what I would do in your situation.

Mail will integrate all your Inboxes (can be turned off in preferences and it will separate them)

It will do the same for all your Sent Folders, Trash, and other standard folders

I would create two New Mailboxes in "On My Mac" and import the mailboxes from your two profiles

Move the imported mail to the proper mailbox you created "On My Mac"

You can "show" or "hide" the remaining folders that IMAP displays

This does NOT really fix your issue though. Your Inbox will show all of your messages. But you could keep your structure within the "On My Mac" folders.

OK, I think this will have to be the way to go, with the following workaround to the problem of everything still on the server popping up in Inboxes of the newly created IMAP accounts in Mac Mail:

In Thunderbird, under each account, create a new folder, say "Current", and move the messages currently appearing in that account's Thunderbird Inbox to it;

log in to each server and delete everything I don't want to keep there any longer; and

in Mac Mail, just delete everything in each account's Inbox.

Does that sound like a reasonable plan?

Also, about integrating Inboxes vs. keeping them separate in Mac Mail: I don't see any setting for this in the Mail preferences. Which pane is it on -- General, Accounts, or something else -- and what is the preference called there? (Screenshot not necessary.)

Finally, thank you for all your help so far!

I guess I'm still not clear on how to handle importing those named folders (not including Inbox) from Thunderbird to Mac Mail. Is this correct:? File > Import Mailboxes... (select Thunderbird), then uncheck what I don't want, namely each Inbox.

Is there any problem caused by the Thunderbird Gmail mailboxes showing in the form pop.gmail.com/NameOfFolderHere, given that I want the Mac Mail accounts now to be IMAP, not POP?

And how do I go about get my Thunderbird Address Book into Mac Mail? Or should it somehow go into Mac Address Book (to become Contacts in Mountain Lion)?

I was certainly hoping this process would be a lot simpler!

So why am I bothering? Because I also read/write e-mail on an iPhone and an iPad. So using essentially the same client woiuld seem to make sense. (Not to mention that Thunderbird sometimes stalls for many minutes while it does something, indexing perhaps.)

g_pirtle

Level 1

45 points

Aug 1, 2012 10:16 AM in response to murrayE

All Mail is an alias to every single email that is on the mail server for your gmail account. It could be in Inbox, custom folder, sent items, etc (I think SPAM is excluded from All Mail). If you search for something in All Mail and it isnt there, its either spam or not existent on the mail server.

Get back to you on the separating accounts. I cannot find it either and I know it use to be a feature, but wouldnt surprise me if it has been removed.

g_pirtle

Level 1

45 points

Aug 1, 2012 10:19 AM in response to murrayE

Yeah just uncheck the mailboxes that you do not want to import. The naming can be changed once it has been imported in Apple Mail and shouldnt be a big deal.

g_pirtle

Level 1

45 points

Aug 1, 2012 10:21 AM in response to murrayE

Contacts can be exported from Thunderbird‘s Address Book in eitherCSV (Comma Separated Value) or tab delimited format.

You can then import them into OS X’s Address Book using its native import feature

g_pirtle

Level 1

45 points

Aug 1, 2012 10:25 AM in response to murrayE

murrayE wrote:

I guess I'm still not clear on how to handle importing those named folders (not including Inbox) from Thunderbird to Mac Mail. Is this correct:? File > Import Mailboxes... (select Thunderbird), then uncheck what I don't want, namely each Inbox.

You can import everything if you want to. All mailboxes imported from other applications will be placed in an Import -> Mail -> YourImportedBoxName. If you import Inbox, it will not put them in Inbox, but Import -> Mail -> Inbox. You can move the mail around from the Import -> Mail directory and delete anything "left over" that you dont need after importing it.

g_pirtle

Level 1

45 points

Aug 1, 2012 10:33 AM in response to murrayE

Being new to Apple Mail, be sure to check out Smart Mailboxes immediately. Example - Setup a SmartMailbox called Email from Professors - you can set a rule to show all emails from professors@myuniversity.edu in that mailbox. It does not actually move them to that folder, but queries your mail account for messages from professors and displays them to you. I have a few of them setup and they can be a quick way to reference important messages.

murrayE Author

Level 1

84 points

Aug 1, 2012 11:25 AM in response to g_pirtle

g_pirtle wrote:

Being new to Apple Mail, be sure to check out Smart Mailboxes immediately. Example - Setup a SmartMailbox called Email from Professors - you can set a rule to show all emails from professors@myuniversity.edu in that mailbox. It does not actually move them to that folder, but queries your mail account for messages from professors and displays them to you. I have a few of them setup and they can be a quick way to reference important messages.

Or in my case, "Email from former students": I'm not a student, but a now-retired professor. 😀

g_pirtle

Level 1

45 points

Aug 1, 2012 11:40 AM in response to murrayE

Once again, I assumed too much. I read university email and thought student. 🙂

Gary_54

Level 1

0 points

Dec 13, 2012 10:59 PM in response to g_pirtle

I tried all these methods and the problem remains the same. Apple Mail only imports a very few of the total. The importer does not even display most of the TB mailboxes at all. If you copy and re-extension a mailbox file, it gets a bare few of the total.

Jan 24, 2014 2:49 AM in response to murrayE

You can use CataSoftware Thunderbird Converter that is complete solution to convert Thunderbird to Mac Mail. I already used it for migrating Thunderbird emails to Mac Mail OS X. Firstly I used its free demo ability that freely converted my 5 Thunderbird emails to Mac Mail. Using the trial edition, I could know about How to migrate Thunderbird to Mac Mail then I bought its licensed key. You can go with it to easily migrate Thunderbird to Mac Mail. Read more >>

http://www.thunderbirdtomacmail.catasoftware.com/

makeduen

Level 1

4 points

Dec 26, 2015 1:14 AM in response to murrayE

HI,

To Migrate Thunderbird Emails to Mac Mail, go to the Thunderbird message store location and for that open Thunderbird go to Tools Menu>>Accounts Settings there will show the path of Thunderbird message store location copy it and paste the copied path on the search bar of your machine. Then you can see there will be showing without extension files like Inbox, Outbox, Draft. Rename the files with .mbox extension like - Inbox.mbox, Outbox.mbox, Draft.mbox.

Then move all these files into Mac Machine after that Import all files into Mac Mail.

You can try the mentioned process to migrate Thunderbird to Mac Mail but It may possible that your data might be lost.

if you seem that there is chance for data loss then try the alternative solution i.e.http://www.pcvare.com/thunderbird-converter.html

murrayE Author

Level 1

84 points

Dec 26, 2015 7:47 AM in response to makeduen

I did manage to migrate from Thunderbird to Mac Mail several years ago. Sorry then that tI cannot evaluate new solutions proffered.

How migrate Thunderbird to Mac Mail?