I use Thunderbird on Windows 10 and Google GMail which is full.Try 2018 and do one month at a time. Too many to move at once??? There might be a limit. I move
I want to do the least amount of thinking possible so I do not
want to go through thousands of emails to delete those no longer
needed - but I need to clear out the IMAP folders on Google servers.
Without deleting.
What I did, thinking I was a genius, was I created yearly local folders.
TB: Local Folder > New Folder > {2016,2017,2018,etc}
Then I sorted the Thunderbird Gmail Inbox by date & I shift-selected
every Inbox email that came in during any given year, say for 2017.
TB: (Selected Set) > Rightclick Move to > Local Folders > 2017
where it says "Moving x of 6347 messages to 2017 and takes a while.
But then the mail is still in the inbox.
What did I do wrong?
I get it's IMAP.
But doesn't the move take care of that?
Or do I have to then DELETE the mail in the inbox that I moved.
I am asking before I do it just to make sure it's the right thing to do.
Or is there an easier way to move Thunderbird emails, to yearly
folders that are stored only on the Windows PC file system?
Nick Cine wrote:
I use Thunderbird on Windows 10 and Google GMail which is full.
I want to do the least amount of thinking possible so I do not
want to go through thousands of emails to delete those no longer
needed - but I need to clear out the IMAP folders on Google servers.
Without deleting.
What I did, thinking I was a genius, was I created yearly local folders.
TB: Local Folder > New Folder > {2016,2017,2018,etc}
Then I sorted the Thunderbird Gmail Inbox by date & I shift-selected
every Inbox email that came in during any given year, say for 2017.
TB: (Selected Set) > Rightclick Move to > Local Folders > 2017
where it says "Moving x of 6347 messages to 2017 and takes a while.
But then the mail is still in the inbox.
What did I do wrong?
I get it's IMAP.
But doesn't the move take care of that?
Or do I have to then DELETE the mail in the inbox that I moved.
I am asking before I do it just to make sure it's the right thing to do.
Or is there an easier way to move Thunderbird emails, to yearly
folders that are stored only on the Windows PC file system?
1) The archive function in Thunderbird with automatically create yearly folders for you. No need to do this manually
2) Right-click on the IMAP account and select settings. Under 'Copies & Folders' under 'Message Archives' change from '"Archives" Folder on:'
IMAP Account to 'Other:' and select 'Local Folders' (You can also add a subfolder where you can separate archived accounts if you wish to
archive more than one IMAP account locally)
3) Click the 'Archive Options...' button to select the individual year
option
4) Because IMAP and performance depends on your bandwidth, as Big Al suggested just archive in batches. You don't have to sort, Thunderbird
will place messages into their respective year folders.
Nick Cine wrote:
I use Thunderbird on Windows 10 and Google GMail which is full.[..snip..]
I want to do the least amount of thinking possible so I do not
want to go through thousands of emails to delete those no longer
needed - but I need to clear out the IMAP folders on Google servers.
Without deleting.
What I did, thinking I was a genius, was I created yearly local folders.
TB: Local Folder > New Folder > {2016,2017,2018,etc}
Then I sorted the Thunderbird Gmail Inbox by date & I shift-selected
every Inbox email that came in during any given year, say for 2017.
Let me get this straight. You reached the maximum capacity of your Google IMAP account, 15GB right?
But you don't want to "go through thousands of emails to delete those no longer needed"? So you just try to download those emails? These emails
"no longer needed" - what for?
Of course you can build up a pile of trash in your home. Physically and virtual; some call it "messie".
On Tue, 20 Feb 2024 03:22:52 +0100, Frank Miller wrote:
Let me get this straight. You reached the maximum capacity of your Google
IMAP account, 15GB right?
But you don't want to "go through thousands of emails to delete those no
longer needed"? So you just try to download those emails?
There are two kinds of people.
The first kind knows they'll NEVER need an email from 2017 to 2020 (or so). The other kind has no idea if they'll ever need to look up an email in that time range.
You're of the former.
I'm of the latter.
I use Thunderbird on Windows 10 and Google GMail which is full.[..snip..]
I want to do the least amount of thinking possible so I do not
want to go through thousands of emails to delete those no longer
needed - but I need to clear out the IMAP folders on Google servers.
Without deleting.
What I did, thinking I was a genius, was I created yearly local folders.
TB: Local Folder > New Folder > {2016,2017,2018,etc}
Then I sorted the Thunderbird Gmail Inbox by date & I shift-selected
every Inbox email that came in during any given year, say for 2017.
If this is the case [15GB of email], Google Takeout may offer a way to transfer the
content to the home computer. And then set about deleting the materials
from the server. Due to the potential size of the content, this may end up shipped as more than one ZIP file. Text email should compress well, but content which is mostly attachments, could be a lot less compressible for shipment.
Let me get this straight. You reached the maximum capacity of your Google IMAP account, 15GB right?
But you don't want to "go through thousands of emails to delete those no longer needed"? So you just try to download those emails?
On 2/19/2024 9:27 PM, Nick Cine wrote:
On Tue, 20 Feb 2024 03:22:52 +0100, Frank Miller wrote:
Let me get this straight. You reached the maximum capacity of your Google >>> IMAP account, 15GB right?
But you don't want to "go through thousands of emails to delete those no >>> longer needed"? So you just try to download those emails?
There are two kinds of people.
The first kind knows they'll NEVER need an email from 2017 to 2020 (or so). >> The other kind has no idea if they'll ever need to look up an email in that >> time range.
You're of the former.
I'm of the latter.
I would have to agree with finding it hard to question someone who has a large amount of email saved. I still have ALL the email from when I
retired over a decade ago, as well as thousands of work pictures and
files. On several occasions I have been called by my former employee to
help settle disputes with various subcontractors, even ending up in
court. In fact, on one case I went to court over 50 times on a case
that went all the way to our states Supreme Court on appeal. We won
every time, and might not have if I wasn't such a stickler for keeping
all that stuff.
On 2/19/2024 9:22 PM, Frank Miller wrote:
Nick Cine wrote:
I use Thunderbird on Windows 10 and Google GMail which is full.[..snip..]
I want to do the least amount of thinking possible so I do not
want to go through thousands of emails to delete those no longer
needed - but I need to clear out the IMAP folders on Google servers.
Without deleting.
What I did, thinking I was a genius, was I created yearly local folders. >>> TB: Local Folder > New Folder > {2016,2017,2018,etc}
Then I sorted the Thunderbird Gmail Inbox by date & I shift-selected
every Inbox email that came in during any given year, say for 2017.
Let me get this straight. You reached the maximum capacity of your Google
IMAP account, 15GB right?
But you don't want to "go through thousands of emails to delete those no
longer needed"? So you just try to download those emails? These emails
"no longer needed" - what for?
Of course you can build up a pile of trash in your home. Physically and
virtual; some call it "messie".
If this is the case [15GB of email], Google Takeout may offer a way to transfer the
content to the home computer. And then set about deleting the materials
from the server. Due to the potential size of the content, this may end up shipped as more than one ZIP file. Text email should compress well, but content which is mostly attachments, could be a lot less compressible for shipment.
[ The "limit" and the "consequences" ] https://support.google.com/mail/answer/9312312?hl=en
"How to download your Google data" https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3024190?hl=en#zippy=%2Chow-do-i-locate-my-exported-takeout-data
https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout
"Google Takeout provides email in the . MBOX format"
By allows a problem to fester for this long, this is
"borderline data recovery", due to bumping your head
on limitations caused by being so close to the 15GB limitation.
That's why I would suggest a "precautionary" Takeout operation
so all the information is stored at home, and you have a copy
of everything... before you "try and try to clean up". I don't
view this as necessarily all that easy, because, after all, this
is Google ("home of no customer support and fuck-you attitude").
Paul
On Tue, 20 Feb 2024 03:22:52 +0100, Frank Miller wrote:
Let me get this straight. You reached the maximum capacity of your Google
IMAP account, 15GB right?
But you don't want to "go through thousands of emails to delete those no
longer needed"? So you just try to download those emails?
There are two kinds of people.
The first kind knows they'll NEVER need an email from 2017 to 2020 (or so). The other kind has no idea if they'll ever need to look up an email in that time range.
You're of the former.
I'm of the latter.
On Mon, 19 Feb 2024 22:04:56 -0600, VanguardLH wrote:
Don't know why Cine thinks Takeout is useless. It collected my Google
data, put in a .zip file which downloaded okay
Try to read your email that was inside the Google Takeout zip file.
It's indecipherable.
Nick Cine wrote:
On Tue, 20 Feb 2024 03:22:52 +0100, Frank Miller wrote:
Let me get this straight. You reached the maximum capacity of your Google >>> IMAP account, 15GB right?
But you don't want to "go through thousands of emails to delete those no >>> longer needed"? So you just try to download those emails?
There are two kinds of people.
The first kind knows they'll NEVER need an email from 2017 to 2020 (or so). >> The other kind has no idea if they'll ever need to look up an email in that >> time range.
You're of the former.
I'm of the latter.
Nope. I'm the third kind you didn't mention.
My mails are sorted by my mail provider into different IMAP folders from filters i set. Like Work, mailing lists, personal, trading, consuming, news, etc.
I receive, read and answer those mails with Thunderbird. In general i keep these mails for about eight weeks in my online IMAP folders.
(Some of my folders in Thunderbird are also set to automatically clean up older mails like mailing lists - on and offline.)
Then i decide which mails i really want or should archive and keep, and download them to dedicated local folders. This archive of my local folders reaches down to 2009 and older.
I never had an unsorted inbox like you, where the capacity exceeded 15 fucking
gigabytes. You just messed up your Google mail account and now you're complaining about downloading it.
Don't know why Cine thinks Takeout is useless. It collected my Google
data, put in a .zip file which downloaded okay
I use Thunderbird on Windows 10 and Google GMail which is full.
I want to do the least amount of thinking possible so I do not
want to go through thousands of emails to delete those no longer
needed - but I need to clear out the IMAP folders on Google servers.
Without deleting.
In article <ur0dje$bknl$1@solani.org>, Nick Cine wrote...
I use Thunderbird on Windows 10 and Google GMail which is full.
I want to do the least amount of thinking possible so I do not
want to go through thousands of emails to delete those no longer
needed - but I need to clear out the IMAP folders on Google servers.
Without deleting.
If you're married to "Without deleting" you have some headaches ahead. But I've found that if you sort your inbox by Sender (just click the header), it's
astonishing how quickly you can discard scores at a time. You also don't have
that constant mental "context change" every time you move to the next email. Try it! It's deeply satisfying!
The mistake is to use IMAP.
The mistake is not to understand the possibilities and the scope of
IMAP. IMAP can do *everything* POP can.
And filters help a lot:
"If Message is older than 1 day move/copy to local folder"
Philip Herlihy wrote:
In article <ur0dje$bknl$1@solani.org>, Nick Cine wrote...
I use Thunderbird on Windows 10 and Google GMail which is full.
I want to do the least amount of thinking possible so I do not
want to go through thousands of emails to delete those no longer
needed - but I need to clear out the IMAP folders on Google servers.
Without deleting.
If you're married to "Without deleting" you have some headaches ahead. But >> I've found that if you sort your inbox by Sender (just click the header), it's
astonishing how quickly you can discard scores at a time. You also don't have
that constant mental "context change" every time you move to the next email. >> Try it! It's deeply satisfying!
The mistake is to use IMAP.
I use Thunderbird on Windows 10 and Google GMail which is full.
I want to do the least amount of thinking possible so I do not
want to go through thousands of emails to delete those no longer
needed - but I need to clear out the IMAP folders on Google servers.
Without deleting.
What I did, thinking I was a genius, was I created yearly local folders.
TB: Local Folder > New Folder > {2016,2017,2018,etc}
Then I sorted the Thunderbird Gmail Inbox by date & I shift-selected
every Inbox email that came in during any given year, say for 2017.
TB: (Selected Set) > Rightclick Move to > Local Folders > 2017
where it says "Moving x of 6347 messages to 2017 and takes a while.
But then the mail is still in the inbox.
What did I do wrong?
I get it's IMAP.
But doesn't the move take care of that?
Or do I have to then DELETE the mail in the inbox that I moved.
I am asking before I do it just to make sure it's the right thing to do.
Or is there an easier way to move Thunderbird emails, to yearly
folders that are stored only on the Windows PC file system?
Jörg Lorenz wrote:
[snip]
The mistake is to use IMAP.
The mistake is not to understand the possibilities and the scope of
IMAP. IMAP can do *everything* POP can.
And filters help a lot:
"If Message is older than 1 day move/copy to local folder"
But using POP avoids the need to understand. Most computer users I've
seen don't have the capability to understand.
sticks <wolverine01@charter.net> wrote:
On 2/19/2024 9:27 PM, Nick Cine wrote:
On Tue, 20 Feb 2024 03:22:52 +0100, Frank Miller wrote:
Let me get this straight. You reached the maximum capacity of your Google >>>> IMAP account, 15GB right?
But you don't want to "go through thousands of emails to delete those no >>>> longer needed"? So you just try to download those emails?
There are two kinds of people.
The first kind knows they'll NEVER need an email from 2017 to 2020 (or so). >>> The other kind has no idea if they'll ever need to look up an email in that >>> time range.
You're of the former.
I'm of the latter.
I would have to agree with finding it hard to question someone who has a
large amount of email saved. I still have ALL the email from when I
retired over a decade ago, as well as thousands of work pictures and
files. On several occasions I have been called by my former employee to
help settle disputes with various subcontractors, even ending up in
court. In fact, on one case I went to court over 50 times on a case
that went all the way to our states Supreme Court on appeal. We won
every time, and might not have if I wasn't such a stickler for keeping
all that stuff.
ALL e-mails? Or just those you decided to keep at the time, or soon thereafter? You keep e-mails sent to you with 2FA codes to complete a
login, and Black Fridays deals over 5 years ago, and dentist appointment reminders, and party invites years ago, and so on? Probably not.
You're retaining your old /valuable/ e-mails, not all of them you ever received.
sticks <wolverine01@charter.net> wrote:
On 2/19/2024 9:27 PM, Nick Cine wrote:
On Tue, 20 Feb 2024 03:22:52 +0100, Frank Miller wrote:
Let me get this straight. You reached the maximum capacity of your Google >>>> IMAP account, 15GB right?
But you don't want to "go through thousands of emails to delete those no >>>> longer needed"? So you just try to download those emails?
There are two kinds of people.
The first kind knows they'll NEVER need an email from 2017 to 2020 (or so). >>> The other kind has no idea if they'll ever need to look up an email in that >>> time range.
You're of the former.
I'm of the latter.
I would have to agree with finding it hard to question someone who has a
large amount of email saved. I still have ALL the email from when I
retired over a decade ago, as well as thousands of work pictures and
files. On several occasions I have been called by my former employee to
help settle disputes with various subcontractors, even ending up in
court. In fact, on one case I went to court over 50 times on a case
that went all the way to our states Supreme Court on appeal. We won
every time, and might not have if I wasn't such a stickler for keeping
all that stuff.
ALL e-mails? Or just those you decided to keep at the time, or soon thereafter? You keep e-mails sent to you with 2FA codes to complete a
login, and Black Fridays deals over 5 years ago, and dentist appointment reminders, and party invites years ago, and so on? Probably not.
You're retaining your old /valuable/ e-mails, not all of them you ever received.
Business and personal accounts should have different retention periods. Businesses may need to keep business records for 7 years, or more.
Mortgage companies have to keep them for 40 years. But that doesn't
mean they keep every e-mail they ever received, just the ones that are related to their business operations. You should never be melding your business and personal-use e-mail account to conflate unrelated e-mails.
Jörg Lorenz wrote:
[snip]
The mistake is to use IMAP.
The mistake is not to understand the possibilities and the scope of
IMAP. IMAP can do *everything* POP can.
And filters help a lot:
"If Message is older than 1 day move/copy to local folder"
But using POP avoids the need to understand. Most computer users I've
seen don't have the capability to understand.
sticks <wolverine01@charter.net> wrote:
On 2/19/2024 9:27 PM, Nick Cine wrote:
On Tue, 20 Feb 2024 03:22:52 +0100, Frank Miller wrote:
Let me get this straight. You reached the maximum capacity of your Google >>>> IMAP account, 15GB right?
But you don't want to "go through thousands of emails to delete those no >>>> longer needed"? So you just try to download those emails?
There are two kinds of people.
The first kind knows they'll NEVER need an email from 2017 to 2020 (or so). >>> The other kind has no idea if they'll ever need to look up an email in that >>> time range.
You're of the former.
I'm of the latter.
I would have to agree with finding it hard to question someone who has a
large amount of email saved. I still have ALL the email from when I
retired over a decade ago, as well as thousands of work pictures and
files. On several occasions I have been called by my former employee to
help settle disputes with various subcontractors, even ending up in
court. In fact, on one case I went to court over 50 times on a case
that went all the way to our states Supreme Court on appeal. We won
every time, and might not have if I wasn't such a stickler for keeping
all that stuff.
ALL e-mails? Or just those you decided to keep at the time, or soon thereafter? You keep e-mails sent to you with 2FA codes to complete a
login, and Black Fridays deals over 5 years ago, and dentist appointment reminders, and party invites years ago, and so on? Probably not.
You're retaining your old /valuable/ e-mails, not all of them you ever received.
My personal stuff is quite different. I keep almost nothing. Once things get addressed and+1 I do pull out a few items like login info, new account info etc.
resolved, they get trashed.
This is why they use ZIP for Takeout, on the expectation
it won't be a puzzle.
Philip Herlihy wrote:
In article <ur0dje$bknl$1@solani.org>, Nick Cine wrote...
I use Thunderbird on Windows 10 and Google GMail which is full.
I want to do the least amount of thinking possible so I do not
want to go through thousands of emails to delete those no longer
needed - but I need to clear out the IMAP folders on Google servers.
Without deleting.
If you're married to "Without deleting" you have some headaches ahead. But I've found that if you sort your inbox by Sender (just click the header), it's
astonishing how quickly you can discard scores at a time. You also don't have
that constant mental "context change" every time you move to the next email.
Try it! It's deeply satisfying!
The mistake is to use IMAP.
If you use POP with the default configuration everything is removed from
the server as soon as it has been transferred to your PC. So no more problems with "Mailbox Full" messages. Yes, this is even a problem for
those who have 50GByte mailboxes!
In your mail client you can automatically archive old stuff from your
Inbox to a "not_wanted_anymore" folder where you can keep it - if you
must - until your PC fills up.
On Tue, 20 Feb 2024 01:47:51 -0500, Paul wrote:
This is why they use ZIP for Takeout, on the expectation
it won't be a puzzle.
Thank you for that advice. The zip file isn't the problem.
It's the mbox format with Thunderbird that I don't understand.
On Tue, 20 Feb 2024 01:47:51 -0500, Paul wrote:
This is why they use ZIP for Takeout, on the expectation
it won't be a puzzle.
Thank you for that advice. The zip file isn't the problem.
It's the mbox format with Thunderbird that I don't understand.
Following Mr. Vanguard's links, I asked for a Google takeout.
I received an email today saying "Your Google data is ready to download".
"We've finished creating a copy of the Google data you requested on
February 20, 2024. You can download your files until February 27, 2024.
Your download will contain data from 54 products."
<https://accounts.google.com/AccountChooser?continue=https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout/download?numbers&Email=email@gmail.com
Download data
Since this export is too big for a single file,
we've split it into 2 packages.
Part 1 of 2 (90 MB)
Part 2 of 2 (15.25 GB)
It will take a while but I'm downloading it now.
I wanted this to be as simple as it should be.
What would be what I want and which many might want is
to point a brand new portable copy of Thunderbird to the
Google takeout mailbox and just be able to (re)read that
email offline.
Is that possible with Thunderbird & a Google Takeout
to read the mail offline with a separate TB instance?
VanguardLH wrote:
Don't know why Cine thinks Takeout is useless. It collected my
Google data, put in a .zip file which downloaded okay
Try to read your email that was inside the Google Takeout zip file.
It's indecipherable.
Just set up another free Gmail account and transfer from your old to the
new.
Attachments get encoded into
long text strings inside of MIME blocks (which bloats the original size
of the attached by by 37%, or more). I suspect it is you that doesn't
know how to decipher the raw source of your e-mails.
On Tue, 20 Feb 2024 20:50:12 -0500, Zaidy036 wrote:Google: transfer data to a second gmail account
Just set up another free Gmail account and transfer from your old to the
new.
That might work. Can you tell me how to "transfer" it though?
Do you "forward" all messages from the old account to the new account?
If you mean "forward", can you do that action en masse in Thunderbird?
On Tue, 20 Feb 2024 20:50:12 -0500, Zaidy036 wrote:
Just set up another free Gmail account and transfer from your old to the
new.
That might work. Can you tell me how to "transfer" it though?
Do you "forward" all messages from the old account to the new account?
If you mean "forward", can you do that action en masse in Thunderbird?
On Tue, 20 Feb 2024 19:52:29 -0600, VanguardLH wrote:
Attachments get encoded into
long text strings inside of MIME blocks (which bloats the original size
of the attached by by 37%, or more). I suspect it is you that doesn't
know how to decipher the raw source of your e-mails.
What I want is Thunderbird to do "decipher the raw source of the emails".
Can Thunderbird be pointed to that file to detach attachments for example?
On 2/20/2024 9:22 PM, Nick Cine wrote:
On Tue, 20 Feb 2024 20:50:12 -0500, Zaidy036 wrote:Google: transfer data to a second gmail account
Just set up another free Gmail account and transfer from your old to the >>> new.
That might work. Can you tell me how to "transfer" it though?
Do you "forward" all messages from the old account to the new account?
If you mean "forward", can you do that action en masse in Thunderbird?
On Tue, 20 Feb 2024 20:50:12 -0500, Zaidy036 wrote:
Just set up another free Gmail account and transfer from your old to the
new.
That might work. Can you tell me how to "transfer" it though?
Do you "forward" all messages from the old account to the new account?
If you mean "forward", can you do that action en masse in Thunderbird?
On 2/20/2024 9:22 PM, Nick Cine wrote:
On Tue, 20 Feb 2024 20:50:12 -0500, Zaidy036 wrote:
Just set up another free Gmail account and transfer from your old to the >>> new.
That might work. Can you tell me how to "transfer" it though?
Do you "forward" all messages from the old account to the new account?
If you mean "forward", can you do that action en masse in Thunderbird?
I think a little "full disclosure" is required.
In addition to the basic MBOX format, Thunderbird adds "comments", which
are metadata it uses. This Inbox, inside a particular account folder,
has metadata. There is one clump of these per message, as one of the
flag bits might be the "I've Read It" flag.
F:\Users\bullwinkle\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\bf9d5uv7.default\Mail\mail.local\Inbox
X-Account-Key: account1
X-UIDL: 1 <=== message number
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 <=== some 0011, some 0001, one 0000 X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000
X-Mozilla-Keys:
The Sent folder has these
F:\Users\bullwinkle\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\bf9d5uv7.default\Mail\Sent
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00800000
X-Mozilla-Keys:
So when you throw an MBOX into the Mail\ folder, it's going to use
some sort of metadata comments based on what it thinks the box type is.
Also, when you place a box into the folder, it should be without
a file extension. Like "Archive2017" rather than "Archive2017.MBOX".
It only makes a mess to leave the extension on the end.
On 2024-02-21 09:21, Paul wrote:
On 2/20/2024 9:22 PM, Nick Cine wrote:
On Tue, 20 Feb 2024 20:50:12 -0500, Zaidy036 wrote:
Just set up another free Gmail account and transfer from your old to the >>>> new.
That might work. Can you tell me how to "transfer" it though?
Do you "forward" all messages from the old account to the new account?
If you mean "forward", can you do that action en masse in Thunderbird?
I think a little "full disclosure" is required.
In addition to the basic MBOX format, Thunderbird adds "comments", which
are metadata it uses. This Inbox, inside a particular account folder,
has metadata. There is one clump of these per message, as one of the
flag bits might be the "I've Read It" flag.
F:\Users\bullwinkle\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\bf9d5uv7.default\Mail\mail.local\Inbox
X-Account-Key: account1
X-UIDL: 1 <=== message number
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 <=== some 0011, some 0001, one 0000
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000
X-Mozilla-Keys:
The Sent folder has these
F:\Users\bullwinkle\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\bf9d5uv7.default\Mail\Sent
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00800000
X-Mozilla-Keys:
So when you throw an MBOX into the Mail\ folder, it's going to use
some sort of metadata comments based on what it thinks the box type is.
Also, when you place a box into the folder, it should be without
a file extension. Like "Archive2017" rather than "Archive2017.MBOX".
It only makes a mess to leave the extension on the end.
And you need to create an empty file with the same name and extension .msf, or TB will not see the new mailbox. The msf is an index, TB will see it is empty and "recreate" the contents.
At least this was so when I tried this a decade or two ago :-)
Ah, for directories, they need extension .sbd:
somefolder.sbd/
somefolder
somefolder.msf
On 2/21/2024 7:20 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 2024-02-21 09:21, Paul wrote:
On 2/20/2024 9:22 PM, Nick Cine wrote:
On Tue, 20 Feb 2024 20:50:12 -0500, Zaidy036 wrote:
Just set up another free Gmail account and transfer from your old to the >>>>> new.
That might work. Can you tell me how to "transfer" it though?
Do you "forward" all messages from the old account to the new account? >>>> If you mean "forward", can you do that action en masse in Thunderbird? >>>>
I think a little "full disclosure" is required.
In addition to the basic MBOX format, Thunderbird adds "comments", which >>> are metadata it uses. This Inbox, inside a particular account folder,
has metadata. There is one clump of these per message, as one of the
flag bits might be the "I've Read It" flag.
F:\Users\bullwinkle\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\bf9d5uv7.default\Mail\mail.local\Inbox
X-Account-Key: account1
X-UIDL: 1 <=== message number
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 <=== some 0011, some 0001, one 0000
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000
X-Mozilla-Keys:
The Sent folder has these
F:\Users\bullwinkle\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\bf9d5uv7.default\Mail\Sent
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00800000
X-Mozilla-Keys:
So when you throw an MBOX into the Mail\ folder, it's going to use
some sort of metadata comments based on what it thinks the box type is.
Also, when you place a box into the folder, it should be without
a file extension. Like "Archive2017" rather than "Archive2017.MBOX".
It only makes a mess to leave the extension on the end.
And you need to create an empty file with the same name and extension .msf, or TB will not see the new mailbox. The msf is an index, TB will see it is empty and "recreate" the contents.
At least this was so when I tried this a decade or two ago :-)
Ah, for directories, they need extension .sbd:
somefolder.sbd/
somefolder
somefolder.msf
How does Takeout handle folder structures ?
My simple test case, doesn't have enough "structure"
to test everything. All I can see in my example, is
the boxname like "Inbox".
I know there are subdirectories, as I accidentally created
one in the email test virtual machine. That's the VM where
I have a (now busted) copy of hmailserver. I can't use that
any more for test, until I figure out how to fix it. It is
one stubborn piece of software.
Paul
On 20.02.24 05:04, VanguardLH wrote:
sticks <wolverine01@charter.net> wrote:
On 2/19/2024 9:27 PM, Nick Cine wrote:
On Tue, 20 Feb 2024 03:22:52 +0100, Frank Miller wrote:
Let me get this straight. You reached the maximum capacity of your Google >>>>> IMAP account, 15GB right?
But you don't want to "go through thousands of emails to delete those no >>>>> longer needed"? So you just try to download those emails?
There are two kinds of people.
The first kind knows they'll NEVER need an email from 2017 to 2020 (or so).
The other kind has no idea if they'll ever need to look up an email in that
time range.
You're of the former.
I'm of the latter.
I would have to agree with finding it hard to question someone who has a >>> large amount of email saved. I still have ALL the email from when I
retired over a decade ago, as well as thousands of work pictures and
files. On several occasions I have been called by my former employee to >>> help settle disputes with various subcontractors, even ending up in
court. In fact, on one case I went to court over 50 times on a case
that went all the way to our states Supreme Court on appeal. We won
every time, and might not have if I wasn't such a stickler for keeping
all that stuff.
ALL e-mails? Or just those you decided to keep at the time, or soon
thereafter? You keep e-mails sent to you with 2FA codes to complete a
login, and Black Fridays deals over 5 years ago, and dentist appointment
reminders, and party invites years ago, and so on? Probably not.
You're retaining your old /valuable/ e-mails, not all of them you ever
received.
This is inefficient and ineffective. And opinion on this can change over time. Given the low price for storage space and the performance of
modern computers this is very expensive.
On 2024-02-20 16:47, Nick Cine wrote:
On Tue, 20 Feb 2024 01:47:51 -0500, Paul wrote:
This is why they use ZIP for Takeout, on the expectation
it won't be a puzzle.
Thank you for that advice. The zip file isn't the problem.
It's the mbox format with Thunderbird that I don't understand.
mbox is a standard format for mail folders. There are several tools that
can read them, at least in Linux.
Thunderbird can read/write it, with some tricks, and then display all
the mails inside. I can not describe the precise procedure in Windows, though, I don't know the directory structure there.
Unless it has been changed, Thunderbird has no built-in Import (or
Export) functionality.
On 2/22/2024 8:48 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
Unless it has been changed, Thunderbird has no built-in Import (or Export) functionality.
[Picture]
https://i.postimg.cc/05XKRJCd/Import-Thunderbird-115.gif
There's a sandbox to play in.
I may have imported a TB profile from somewhere with it.
I tried that, instead of just copying a profile folder
and using the Profile Manager to glue it in. Normally
I just folder stuff here and there.
Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:
On 2/22/2024 8:48 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
Unless it has been changed, Thunderbird has no built-in Import (or
Export) functionality.
[Picture]
https://i.postimg.cc/05XKRJCd/Import-Thunderbird-115.gif
There's a sandbox to play in.
I may have imported a TB profile from somewhere with it.
I tried that, instead of just copying a profile folder
and using the Profile Manager to glue it in. Normally
I just folder stuff here and there.
OK, so they have added some - but only minimal - import functionality.
The only one which makes some sense is 'Import from Outlook', but even that's probably not very common, people going from Outlook to Thunderbird.
So they can import from another Thunderbird installation, from a
Seamonkey installation and from a Thunderbird profile backup. Whoopie!
Anyway, this was about import of mbox folders and it seems they still
have nothing for that (unless 'Becky! Internet Mail' - never heard of
that, must be *very* common :-( - uses mbox format).
I use Thunderbird on Windows 10 and Google GMail which is full.
I want to do the least amount of thinking possible so I do not
want to go through thousands of emails to delete those no longer
needed - but I need to clear out the IMAP folders on Google servers.
Without deleting.
What I did, thinking I was a genius, was I created yearly local folders.
TB: Local Folder > New Folder > {2016,2017,2018,etc}
Then I sorted the Thunderbird Gmail Inbox by date & I shift-selected
every Inbox email that came in during any given year, say for 2017.
TB: (Selected Set) > Rightclick Move to > Local Folders > 2017
where it says "Moving x of 6347 messages to 2017 and takes a while.
But then the mail is still in the inbox.
What did I do wrong?
I get it's IMAP.
But doesn't the move take care of that?
Or do I have to then DELETE the mail in the inbox that I moved.
I am asking before I do it just to make sure it's the right thing to do.
Or is there an easier way to move Thunderbird emails, to yearly
folders that are stored only on the Windows PC file system?
Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:
On 2/22/2024 8:48 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
Unless it has been changed, Thunderbird has no built-in Import (or
Export) functionality.
[Picture]
https://i.postimg.cc/05XKRJCd/Import-Thunderbird-115.gif
There's a sandbox to play in.
I may have imported a TB profile from somewhere with it.
I tried that, instead of just copying a profile folder
and using the Profile Manager to glue it in. Normally
I just folder stuff here and there.
OK, so they have added some - but only minimal - import functionality.
The only one which makes some sense is 'Import from Outlook', but even that's probably not very common, people going from Outlook to Thunderbird.
On 2024-02-22 16:20, Frank Slootweg wrote:
Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:
On 2/22/2024 8:48 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
Unless it has been changed, Thunderbird has no built-in Import (or
Export) functionality.
[Picture]
https://i.postimg.cc/05XKRJCd/Import-Thunderbird-115.gif
There's a sandbox to play in.
I may have imported a TB profile from somewhere with it.
I tried that, instead of just copying a profile folder
and using the Profile Manager to glue it in. Normally
I just folder stuff here and there.
OK, so they have added some - but only minimal - import functionality.
The only one which makes some sense is 'Import from Outlook', but even that's probably not very common, people going from Outlook to Thunderbird.
I did just that, back in the day. Netscape it was then. Outlook and
Exchange.
Frank Slootweg wrote:
Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:
On 2/22/2024 8:48 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
Unless it has been changed, Thunderbird has no built-in Import (or
Export) functionality.
[Picture]
https://i.postimg.cc/05XKRJCd/Import-Thunderbird-115.gif
There's a sandbox to play in.
I may have imported a TB profile from somewhere with it.
I tried that, instead of just copying a profile folder
and using the Profile Manager to glue it in. Normally
I just folder stuff here and there.
OK, so they have added some - but only minimal - import functionality.
The only one which makes some sense is 'Import from Outlook', but even that's probably not very common, people going from Outlook to Thunderbird.
So they can import from another Thunderbird installation, from a Seamonkey installation and from a Thunderbird profile backup. Whoopie!
Anyway, this was about import of mbox folders and it seems they still have nothing for that (unless 'Becky! Internet Mail' - never heard of
that, must be *very* common :-( - uses mbox format).
If you have a file in mbox format you can drag and drop it to
import...Beeen doing it for years.
Jonathan N. Little <lws4art@gmail.com> wrote:
Frank Slootweg wrote:
Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:
On 2/22/2024 8:48 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
Unless it has been changed, Thunderbird has no built-in Import (or >>>>> Export) functionality.
[Picture]
https://i.postimg.cc/05XKRJCd/Import-Thunderbird-115.gif
There's a sandbox to play in.
I may have imported a TB profile from somewhere with it.
I tried that, instead of just copying a profile folder
and using the Profile Manager to glue it in. Normally
I just folder stuff here and there.
OK, so they have added some - but only minimal - import functionality. >>>
The only one which makes some sense is 'Import from Outlook', but even >>> that's probably not very common, people going from Outlook to Thunderbird. >>>
So they can import from another Thunderbird installation, from a
Seamonkey installation and from a Thunderbird profile backup. Whoopie!
Anyway, this was about import of mbox folders and it seems they still >>> have nothing for that (unless 'Becky! Internet Mail' - never heard of
that, must be *very* common :-( - uses mbox format).
If you have a file in mbox format you can drag and drop it to
import...Beeen doing it for years.
My original need (back in 2015), which was snipped in Paul's response,
was to import a large *tree* of mbox folders (some 8000 messages, don't
know how many folders), hence I said "mbox folders" (plural).
Can the current built-in Import function also handle *that*?
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2024-02-22 16:20, Frank Slootweg wrote:
Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:I did just that, back in the day. Netscape it was then. Outlook and
On 2/22/2024 8:48 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
Unless it has been changed, Thunderbird has no built-in Import (or >>>>> Export) functionality.
[Picture]
https://i.postimg.cc/05XKRJCd/Import-Thunderbird-115.gif
There's a sandbox to play in.
I may have imported a TB profile from somewhere with it.
I tried that, instead of just copying a profile folder
and using the Profile Manager to glue it in. Normally
I just folder stuff here and there.
OK, so they have added some - but only minimal - import functionality. >>>
The only one which makes some sense is 'Import from Outlook', but even >>> that's probably not very common, people going from Outlook to Thunderbird. >>
Exchange.
Was that from (Outlook/Exchange) at work to (Netscape) at home/private?
If so, that was also kind of the path for me, from Outlook
(non-Exchange [1]) at work to Outlook Express at home/private.
[1] We didn't run Exchange because our company made/supported the
'Exchange killer'! :-)
My original need (back in 2015), which was snipped in Paul's response,
was to import a large *tree* of mbox folders (some 8000 messages, don't
know how many folders), hence I said "mbox folders" (plural).
Can the current built-in Import function also handle *that*?
On 2/23/2024 9:40 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
My original need (back in 2015), which was snipped in Paul's response, was to import a large *tree* of mbox folders (some 8000 messages, don't know how many folders), hence I said "mbox folders" (plural).
Can the current built-in Import function also handle *that*?
Why not test it ?
Do you use VMs at all ?
The reason I suggest you test it, is you have the tree of boxes
to test with. Nobody else has a tree like that suited to
immediate test. It's not the work to make a test case
that matters -- it's getting the details right. And the
last time I made a test case, it was wide of the mark and
unusable. I have an AWK script that generated a 15GB mailbox
for me, as an example of the work I put into it.
On 2024-02-23 15:44, Frank Slootweg wrote:
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2024-02-22 16:20, Frank Slootweg wrote:
Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:
On 2/22/2024 8:48 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
Unless it has been changed, Thunderbird has no built-in Import (or >>>>> Export) functionality.
[Picture]
https://i.postimg.cc/05XKRJCd/Import-Thunderbird-115.gif
There's a sandbox to play in.
I may have imported a TB profile from somewhere with it.
I tried that, instead of just copying a profile folder
and using the Profile Manager to glue it in. Normally
I just folder stuff here and there.
OK, so they have added some - but only minimal - import functionality.
The only one which makes some sense is 'Import from Outlook', but even
that's probably not very common, people going from Outlook to Thunderbird.
I did just that, back in the day. Netscape it was then. Outlook and
Exchange.
Was that from (Outlook/Exchange) at work to (Netscape) at home/private?
Yes.
It worked with the Windows Netscape, not with the Linux version, because
it had access to a library (mapi?). Once done, a second step would
migrate the mails to Linux easily.
What I could not do was migrate the inbox from enterprise Exchange, that
one needed to be online and active with the company login in order to be readable, and I thought of that one day too late. I could only copy
local folders.
If so, that was also kind of the path for me, from Outlook
(non-Exchange [1]) at work to Outlook Express at home/private.
[1] We didn't run Exchange because our company made/supported the
'Exchange killer'! :-)
The best current method to migrate mails today is using an intermediate (online) imap server. You just copy mails using one software/account combination to another imap folder, which you then access with the other software combo.
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:
On 2024-02-23 15:44, Frank Slootweg wrote:
Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:Yes.
On 2024-02-22 16:20, Frank Slootweg wrote:
Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:
On 2/22/2024 8:48 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
Unless it has been changed, Thunderbird has no built-in Import (or >>>>>>> Export) functionality.
[Picture]
https://i.postimg.cc/05XKRJCd/Import-Thunderbird-115.gif
There's a sandbox to play in.
I may have imported a TB profile from somewhere with it.
I tried that, instead of just copying a profile folder
and using the Profile Manager to glue it in. Normally
I just folder stuff here and there.
OK, so they have added some - but only minimal - import functionality.
The only one which makes some sense is 'Import from Outlook', but even
that's probably not very common, people going from Outlook to Thunderbird.
I did just that, back in the day. Netscape it was then. Outlook and
Exchange.
Was that from (Outlook/Exchange) at work to (Netscape) at home/private? >>
It worked with the Windows Netscape, not with the Linux version, because
it had access to a library (mapi?). Once done, a second step would
migrate the mails to Linux easily.
What I could not do was migrate the inbox from enterprise Exchange, that
one needed to be online and active with the company login in order to be
readable, and I thought of that one day too late. I could only copy
local folders.
Funny you mention that! I had a similar (or even the same?) problem
and went back to my (ex-)employer for a day to convert my .pst archive
to a .ost one (I hope that's what they were named, long ago, over two decades).
I still have the .pst and .ost files on CD(s) (and probably somewhere
on a HDD).
VanguardLH wrote:
Attachments get encoded into long text strings inside of MIME blocks
(which bloats the original size of the attached by by 37%, or more).
I suspect it is you that doesn't know how to decipher the raw
source of your e-mails.
What I want is Thunderbird to do "decipher the raw source of the
emails". Can Thunderbird be pointed to that file to detach
attachments for example?
Nick Cine <nickcine@is.invalid> wrote:
VanguardLH wrote:
Attachments get encoded into long text strings inside of MIME blocks
(which bloats the original size of the attached by by 37%, or more).
I suspect it is you that doesn't know how to decipher the raw
source of your e-mails.
What I want is Thunderbird to do "decipher the raw source of the
emails". Can Thunderbird be pointed to that file to detach
attachments for example?
There is no separate file that tags along with an e-mail. An attachment
is *in* the e-mail. If you want the attachment to be saved separate of
the e-mail, right-click on the attachment entry shown in the e-mail to
save it to a file. That will decode the MIME block in the e-mail
message from the long encoded text string into the specified output
file.
An attachment should be presented in the GUI of Thunderbird to let you
know an e-mail has an attachment. Try double-clicking the button or
icon showing the attachment. Should be an option to Open. That will
extract the attachment to save into a file, and then pass the file to
the associated filetype handler to let you view the attachment's file.
When looking at the raw source of a message, there are no attachments.
There are MIME blocks in which attachments got encoded into long text strings. It's when rendered that features in the client will present on
how to handle the MIME blocks, like to extract the long encoded text
strings into a separate file. The MIME header indicates the filetype,
so the client extracts and saves into a file by that filetype.
As I recall, there is even an add-on that will automatically save all attachments from MIME parts in e-mail messages into output files in the folder you specify in the add-on. I've never used such an add-on, but someone might have, and tell you about it. While you could select the e-mails from which you want to extract attachments, the one I remember
would do it automatically on newly received e-mails: if a new e-mail had
an attachment, the add-on would automatically extract all attachments in
the new e-mail to some folder you specified in the add-on. It would
even modify the e-mail to put a URL to a local file in place of the attachment in the e-mail, so you could reduce the size of your e-mails,
but still have a clickable link in the e-mail to view the extracted attachment. (*)
(*) Possibly I'm recalling an add-in to MS Outlook that did this instead
of an add-on to Thunderbird, like:
https://www.sperrysoftware.com/Email-Tools/shop/
Attachment Save
After many years of using multiple e-mail clients, sometimes your
memory conflates features across them.
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