need to import old Zimbra messages into Zimbra desktop

[jabell1971]

I had been happily using Zimbra desktop under windows xp for the past three months to connect to my university email server via POP. Over the past weekend my university switched to ZCS as their email server. I was able to connect and receive messages as normal after the switch but could not send mails. Ironically, Zimbra desktop was not even supported by my university and they had no clue on how I should rectify the situation. So left to my own devices I managed to get the desktop working with the Zimbra Server but only after removing my original account. In the process I lost all of the mail, folders, contacts etc that I had on my original Zimbra desktop. I believe I still have all that information however as I took care to backup the /zimbra/zdesktop directory before removing the account.

Now I would like to know if there is any way to get those emails, contacts, etc back into my Zimbra desktop so that I can manipulate them in a practical way. Going through each .msg file in the zimbra /store directory just ain't gonna cut it. Any help would be greatly appreciated, I am getting none from my own IT folks as they specifically have told me they won't support Zimbra desktop.

Thanks for listenting,

jeff

[jjzhuang]

I'm not sure why you lost your data. Did you removed the account to setup a new account with the new service? You are allowed to have multiple accounts.

Also with a ZCS server you can setup the sync as a Zimbra account, which will provide much more features than using a POP server.

[jabell1971]

I was not able to create a new email account with the same email address. I desperately needed to send emails so I decide to completely delete the old account and then I set up a new account (using ZCS as my server). At that point I was unable to import my old emails (which I saved when I copied the /zdesktop folder) back into Zimbra.

I ultimately solved the problem by using a shareware email converter to convert the Zimbra desktop mail files into Mozzilla/Thunderbird mbox format. Then I linked to my campus Zimbra mail account via IMAP using Thunderbird. Then I resent myself the emails to get them into the new Zimbra account. The whole process was quite time consuming and a little frustrating. Perhaps it could have been handled more efficiently by my IT folks but as I said earlier they would not support Zimbra desktop to Zimbra CS conversions here (go figure!).

While I enjoyed ZImbra desktop (particular becaus it had offline folders) I will no longer be using it. I will be using the campus online Zimbra now. I will miss the offline folders but to be frank, since I had to take care of everything using Thunderbird/Mozilla mail, I think I will use that instead of Zimbra desktop if I ever have the need of a desktop mail client in the future.

[jjzhuang]

You could actually use the import/export feature of zimbra desktop to achieve what you did. The reason your school doesn't yet support zimbra desktop is because zimbra desktop is still a beta product. Once it reaches 1.0, I'd assume many IT departments will start to support it. Thanks!

[jabell1971]

I thought of trying that, but after the fact. I was not able to import once I had created the new account. It seems I must export first right?

[y@w]

Exporting it before hand would have saved you some troubles, but you can definitely get those imported again. In the store directory, you can just rename the .msg files to .eml. Then you can import them into Thunderbird using the import/export plugin. Using Thunderbird you can push them into Zimbra if you add the /tb flag at the end of your username rather than re-sending the messages.

[EastOfArbmiz]

I have some .mbox files from Evolution that I would like to import into Zimbra Desktop - is there any way to do this?

I've been trawling the forums and net for this, but it there doesn't seem to be.

[y@w]

Originally Posted by EastOfArbmiz

I have some .mbox files from Evolution that I would like to import into Zimbra Desktop - is there any way to do this?

I've been trawling the forums and net for this, but it there doesn't seem to be.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that you probably are going to want to import those messages into an IMAP server account rather than migrating to a different client. Then if you want to change clients again in the future, you just have to setup the new client to pull email from that IMAP server. No more dealing with migrating emails from one client to the next You can import mbox files pretty easily using the Thunderbird import/export plugin.

[jjzhuang]

Originally Posted by EastOfArbmiz

I have some .mbox files from Evolution that I would like to import into Zimbra Desktop - is there any way to do this?

I've been trawling the forums and net for this, but it there doesn't seem to be.

our importing feature doesn't yet support things like .mbox.