Zimbra

iwoodnt · #1 (**permalink**) 08-14-2006, 09:04 PM

I hope this is the right forum and I apologize if this has been answered elsewhere.

I am trying to find a way to import thunderbird mbox files without much success. The dates get messed up if I try to copy from local folders to the zimbra imap server so I was wondering if there is a way to do this properly or a tool similar to that for importing pst files.
I have searched the forum a bit, but haven't been able to find a definitive answer to this problem, so I would appreciate it if somebody could point me in the right direction.

I am running Zimbra Collaboration Suite 3.1 on Fedora Core 4 and the clients I want to move are Thunderbird on Windows XP.

rsharpe · #2 (**permalink**) 08-15-2006, 06:35 AM

I am not sure if this is possible. I tried to figure this out without success. I can't recall if this only happens with Zimbra's IMAP or if it is all IMAP servers... but if you can get your messages uploaded to another IMAP server correctly you can then use IMAPSYNC. There may be other work arounds, such as importing into Outlook first then using the PST import utility, but this will also require exporting the mail from thunderbird to something Outlook can read.

dijichi2 · #3 (**permalink**) 08-15-2006, 02:30 PM

it is possible but very hard work. i imported several 2gb+ mailboxes and it took me best part of a morning to do it. it involves getting a freeware windoze utility (sorry, can't remember which one) which correctly imports the thunderbird flavour of mbox, then outputting it to single messages put into a directory hierarchy, then combining back to .pst file which you then import folder by folder in using the zimbra .pst import. it does work, and you do end up with the correct dates but if you have more than a handful of folders its pretty tough going..

it would be a very very kind thing of zimbra to add a little option to the import routines to handle thunderbird's (and netscape, mozilla etc) odd date handling - it's a problem that has come up repeatedly.

iwoodnt · #4 (**permalink**) 08-15-2006, 07:41 PM

I figured as much. At this stage I will probably go the mbox -> eml -> Outlook -> PST importere route.

I am having trouble converting to eml though as all of the software I have tried so far seems to miss some mails or throw errors, possibly because of the various types of character encoding used.

I suppose I will work something out when I have some more time and I'll be sure to post a how-to here.

KevinH · #5 (**permalink**) 08-15-2006, 08:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dijichi2

it would be a very very kind thing of zimbra to add a little option to the import routines to handle thunderbird's (and netscape, mozilla etc) odd date handling - it's a problem that has come up repeatedly.

Bugzilla?

gdawg64 · #6 (**permalink**) 09-06-2008, 06:41 PM

This is an older thread but I found a solution that I wanted to share.

1. Sign up for a free gmail account at www.gmail.com

2. After logging in to your gmail account, click settings at the top, click the Forwarding and POP/IMAP "tab", and make sure that IMAP is enabled (it should be by default).

3. Open Thunderbird and set up an IMAP account to gmail using the instructions at Thunderbird 2.0 - Help Center.

4. You can now drag your Thunderbird data and drop it into your gmail account from within the Thunderbird GUI. You can actually drag and drop entire folders!

5. After you've moved all of your data to Thunderbird, set up your gmail account in zimbra and synch it. Your data has now been migrated.