How do I open old mail files held locally within my Thunderbird profile
I have several old mail files that are in the imap subfolder of my default Thunderbird profile held in Appdata/roaming/thunderbird.
The mail accounts are no longer active on the net but I now need to see an old email from several years ago and I can't work out how to get it back in to Thunderbird so that I can read it.
Chosen solution
Install the ImportExportTools extension. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/importexporttools/
This will allow you to import the existing mail file(s) from the previous IMAP account into your Local Folders account.
Note, mail files are mbox files.
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Before anything else, can you confirm the mail files underneath your 'imap subfolder' actually contain the full messages, and not just the headers?
In other words, did you have synchronization enabled for your IMAP account?
You can open a mail file with a text editor to check.
Hi, yes I'm almost certain they do - I remember setting the automatically download new msgs setting, the file size is > 1gig and when I open a message I can just about make out the message text
when I open a message I can just about make out the message text
Are you saying the IMAP account still exists in Thunderbird?
No, I don't see that a/c when I open Thunderbird - I removed it as it was cluttering the left hand panel up, and I knew there would be no new msgs going into it. Oops!
Chosen Solution
Install the ImportExportTools extension. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/importexporttools/
This will allow you to import the existing mail file(s) from the previous IMAP account into your Local Folders account.
Note, mail files are mbox files.
Thanks for that, will have a go in the morning and then respond to you.
Whoopee it worked - It's mixed all the folders up with my existing folders in TB, but that's being picky - I can sort that out. Chs!