[ALUG] Importing a big mail hierarchy into Evolution - how?

[Brett Parker]

On 02 Feb 17:50, Chris G wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 02, 2009 at 04:19:04PM +0000, Brett Parker wrote:
> > On 02 Feb 10:10, Chris G wrote:
> > > I am moving my wife over to xubuntu from windows XP, the move has been
> > > precipitated by the disk drive on her XP system dying.  Fortunately I
> > > was able to extract all the data before it expired completely - but
> > > that's another story.  (I'll post about that in a minute)
> > > 
> > > She was using Thunderbird and Firefox on XP so the initial transition
> > > to Linux has been fairly painless.  I have got all of her Thunderbird
> > > mail on the Linux system now.
> > > 
> > > However it would be better if I could move her to Evolution because
> > > that synchronizes "out of the box" with her Palm Treo - I have the
> > > synchronization working already.
> > > 
> > > The trouble is I need to get all of her mail across from Thunderbird
> > > to Evolution.  It's easy enough copying individual mailboxes across
> > > but she has an extensive, hierarchical, mail archive with hundreds of
> > > messages in a complex hierarchy of fifty or sixty folders.  It would
> > > take forever to copy this folder by folder.
> > > 
> > > So, can anyone suggest a way to export the folders from Thunderbird
> > > and import them into Evolution preserving the structure?  I have found
> > > the ImportExportTools add-on for Thunderbird but Evolution doesn't
> > > seem to understand the format of what it exports.
> > 
> > The usual solution is "IMAP server".
> > 
> > Though, quite why the mail wasn't already just stored on the IMAP server
> > is beyond me... people these days!
> > 
> We *do* use an IMAP server but, being somewhat paranoid and also
> sometimes needing to see mail when the ADSL or something dies it's a
> good idea to keep archives at least on the local system.  Not to
> mention that an IMAP server with >2Gb of E-Mail tends to get a bit
> slow at times.

brettp at miranda:~/Maildir$ du -sh
1.6G    .
brettp at miranda:~/Maildir$ 

So, that's 1.6G of mail, that I access through IMAP all the time...

> > (Weirdly, even though I'm using mutt, and my mail is stored on the same
> > box as I'm composing this, I read my mail via imap - it's slightly
> > quicker for some situations, and lots quicker when I have large
> > maildirs).
> > 
> Personally I use mutt too but it's not for everyone.  My mutt runs on
> a remote system (I have ssh access to my hosting provider) so I can
> access it from anywhere using ssh - from my Nokia E71 if need be.

My mutt runs on a remote system too, it happens to be the mailserver,
and I know from experience that it's quicker to access my mail via the
IMAP server running on the mailserver than by talking directly to the
Maildirs. Also uses less memory (as the IMAP server has a neat index on
the Maildir).

Oh, and I can access it from anywhere using ssh, even from my phone
(well, any of the 4 that I currently carry with me... which includes my
2 "spare" phones).

Lalala,
-- 
Brett Parker