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How to read the emails from a usb copy of my TB profile on an Android tablet ?

  • 4 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 10 views
  • Last reply by aristides_h

aristides_h
aristides_h
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I use a POP account on my office PC and an IMAP one (k9 Maili) on my Android Tablet. I don't want to use cloud synchronization. Every day I copy my TB profile on a usb stick. When I am out of the office I use the IMAP account and receive my Emails with no problem. But, some times I need to read (only to read) some older emails from the usb stick and that's the problem. The same problem exists with Windows. Every Local Folder (ex. ORDERS) of the TB account has 2 Files, one named ORDERS.MSF and the other named ORDERS without extension in the TB profile. The body of the emails is in the ORDERS file, the one with no extension. I have tried to use various Android applications to read the no extension files but in vain. Either they open the file showing the full HTML code, along with the body of the Email, or they open properly only 1-2 emails from the folder (in descending date order, from the older to newer). Any Help !! I repeat that I want only to read the emails not to do anything else ! Thank you in advance

I use a POP account on my office PC and an IMAP one (k9 Maili) on my Android Tablet. I don't want to use cloud synchronization. Every day I copy my TB profile on a usb stick. When I am out of the office I use the IMAP account and receive my Emails with no problem. But, some times I need to read (only to read) some older emails from the usb stick and that's the problem. The same problem exists with Windows. Every Local Folder (ex. ORDERS) of the TB account has 2 Files, one named ORDERS.MSF and the other named ORDERS without extension in the TB profile. The body of the emails is in the ORDERS file, the one with no extension. I have tried to use various Android applications to read the no extension files but in vain. Either they open the file showing the full HTML code, along with the body of the Email, or they open properly only 1-2 emails from the folder (in descending date order, from the older to newer). Any Help !! I repeat that I want only to read the emails not to do anything else ! Thank you in advance

All Replies (4)

christ1
christ1
  • Top 25 Contributor
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I don't want to use cloud synchronization.

What do you think IMAP is then? All mail is on the server, a.k.a in the 'cloud'.

aristides_h
aristides_h Question owner
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I know how IMAP works. It's obvious that you don't understand my problem.

Zenos
Zenos
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The files you are copying are mailbox files and are effectively verbatim records of email messages as they arrived "on the wire". So they will have HTML tags, or base-64 encoding, or any of the many other encodings supported by mime. I wonder what led you to think that these files ought to be human-readable? Would you expect to be able to read the pst or dbx files generated by Microsoft mail clients in this way? Or even docx or xlsx files?

You need something that can parse these mbox files, otherwise your copies are going to be largely useless to you. The most likely thing is another email client that uses the mbox format, and I don't know of any of those on Android. Android is not especially "open" about data stores and its file system, so even if you found an email client that used mbox files, I'd expect getting it to open and read them to be hard work.

You'd do better to export your messages to a general-purpose format such as HTML files rather than trying to make sense of what is effectively one email client's database. Look at the ImportExportTools add-on for Thunderbird. Or use IMAP.

aristides_h
aristides_h Question owner
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Thank you Zenos for your reply.