moving folders from Zimbra onto non-Zimbra IMAP servers

[ewilen]

I have a situation where it would be very convenient if I could do either or both of the following with ZD client:

• Take a mail folder on my Zimbra account and move it onto my account on a third-party IMAP server
• Take a mail folder from my Local Folders and move it onto my account on a third-party IMAP server

Any idea how to do this? Is there an RFE pertaining to this capability?

Generally, if I've got some folders on Zimbra and I want to move them over to an account on another IMAP server, what's an easy way to go about it? I imagine some other IMAP clients can do this; are there any that make the task especially pain-free?

[jjzhuang]

you can use import/export under Options.

[ewilen]

Hm, I can export no problem, but when I choose Import, it seems that I can only import into my Zimbra account, not accounts on other servers (even though I've got accounts on those servers configured).

Am I missing something?

[ewilen]

Well, with Mail.app (Mac OS 10.5) all I have to do is drag a mail folder from one IMAP account, or from "on my Mac" (i.e. local folder) onto another IMAP server, and it copies without a hitch.

So at least in principle I have a tool for doing this, but it'd be nice if Zimbra Desktop supports this type of functionality.

[bonoboslr]

I was going to suggest an imap client to do this - drag and drop. However, this will not work for bulk. IMAPSync maybe what you are looking for.

[ewilen]

Thanks for the suggestion. It may be a good option for the particular project i have in mind.

Nevertheless I think that the ability to copy folders between different servers and local storage would be a useful feature in ZDC. (Although Mail.app imposes some limitations on what you can copy--basically the filed mail folders, not "special" folders such as Inbox or Trash--it "just works" in a user-friendly way that I'm sure end-users will find useful. I haven't checked yet, but I'll bet some other clients can also do this, and ZDC would do well to provide a similar capability.)

It might help to explain the need in this case, though. I'm about to perform some comparative evaluations of groupware with a group of internal users. We expect the users to do as much of their normal work as possible with the candidate servers/clients; however at the end of the evaluation we may need to move them back onto the existing email system, at least for a while.

Unfortunately the existing mail client, QuickMail, is POP-only, uses a proprietary format for storing mail, and as far as I know there's no translation tool available. (Emailchemy will translate from QM format, but not to it.) Of course, there are ways that I could mirror incoming mail onto both the existing account and the evaluation system, but this will not preserve any filing or deletion decisions a user makes.

So I think the best way of getting their mail back to Quickmail will be to use IMAP to move folders from the evaluation system (e.g., Zimbra) onto the current production system. We can then put the contents of each folder, one at a time, into the Inbox of the production system so that it can be downloaded and filed in the POP client.

Any further thoughts would be welcome; if I don't hear anything else about ZDC specifically, I'll go ahead and file an RFE.

EDIT: On further reflection I can just point Quickmail POP at Zimbra, and copy mail into Zimbra's Inbox to be downloaded and filed. Still, the basic point stands...