On Monday 21 January 2008 17:21, Sean Gibbins wrote:
> Alan Pope wrote:
> > On Mon, Jan 21, 2008 at 03:49:28PM +0000, hantslug@??? wrote:
> >> I have been trying now for something like 14 hours to retrieve my
> >> husband's email from Thunderbird on the damaged installation
[snip]
> > Isn't thunderbird mail held locally as lots of little folders and files
> > that you can import? I am sure I migrated clare from thunderbird to
> > evolution by copying the .thunderbird mail folder and importing the mbox
> > files into evolution.
>
> So following on from that I think you are looking at the contents of
> '~/.mozilla-thunderbird' Lisi.
>
> I have always done something along the lines of building the new box,
> installing Thunderbird, copying the old Thunderbird mail directory
> across to the new build, then:
> - back up the new ~/.mozilla-thunderbird folder
> - figure out which of the relevant folders is the one that holds the
> mail on the old build (say, .mozilla-thunderbird/hm5kjjh2.sean)
> - figure out which is the new one (it will be similarly named and have
> similar contents, say ~/.mozilla-thunderbird/x4hyhrml.sean)
> - move the old mail folder to the new name and location (mv
> <path_to>hm5kjjh2.sean ~/.mozilla-thunderbird/x4hyhrml.sean)
> - fire up Thunderbird and curse me if it fails!
Curses averted - you are subject to blessings!
> Now, I am just going out of the door* and this is off the top of my
> head, and may be the flakiest way of doing this imaginable, so please
> ensure that you have good copies of both the new and the old
> installations so that you can easily revert back if necessary.
Mutatis mutandis, it worked a treat. The main problem was that there were 2
old folders of the type you mentioned and one new, and I had no idea which of
the old ones (both .default) was the mail I wanted. So I used the GUI to
copy both old files into the new folder and watched one of the files take a
measurable amount of time to copy. I then assumed that the larger one was
the mail, renamed that to the name of the new file, said yes, please
overwrite - and when I opened up Thunderbird everything was there, including
passwords :-).
> Also, don't take it too literally - I may have missed out something. The
> principle is that you create the new environment on the new build and
> then drop in the old mail directory, renaming it to the new, empty one.
I have never before created the new environment in advance, just installed
Thunderbird and copied the hidden directory over from the old installation to
the new and it has always worked. But this time it was having none of it.
> Sean
>
> * to see British Sea Power in Portsmouth - w00t!
Hope it was fun. :-)
Lisi
