Join the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Firefox leadership team to celebrate Firefox 20th anniversary and discuss Firefox’s future on Mozilla Connect. Mark your calendar on Thursday, November 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC!

Avatar for Username

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Denne tråden ble arkivert. Still et nytt spørsmål dersom du trenger hjelp.

MBox format support

ephemeris.lappis
ephemeris.lappis
more options

Hello !

I've been looking for some ways to import GMail takeout exported mails files that use MBox format. Googling I found some extension to do it, named "ImportExportTools NG". I've tested and it seems to have some issues : for example, after importing some MBOX files, the mails counts doesn't match GMail's values. I have not spent time to diagnose it yet...

I've also tried to simply put my MBOX files in my TB local folders and it seems to work.

Please, could someone confirm that this last trivial way actually works, and thus there's no need to any extension or tool ?

Thanks for your help.

Regards.

Hello ! I've been looking for some ways to import GMail takeout exported mails files that use MBox format. Googling I found some extension to do it, named "ImportExportTools NG". I've tested and it seems to have some issues : for example, after importing some MBOX files, the mails counts doesn't match GMail's values. I have not spent time to diagnose it yet... I've also tried to simply put my MBOX files in my TB local folders and it seems to work. Please, could someone confirm that this last trivial way actually works, and thus there's no need to any extension or tool ? Thanks for your help. Regards.

Endret av ephemeris.lappis

Valgt løsning

Thunderbird's native storage format is the RD variant of MBOX. I think Google use exactly the same variant, but I am not 100% on that. Apple mail used to also use it, and with the application of a zip program the native mbox files can still be extracted from when Apple mail exports and imorted the same way.

Les dette svaret i sammenhengen 👍 1

All Replies (4)

sfhowes
sfhowes
  • Top 10 Contributor
more options

Copying the mbox file into Mail/Local Folders in the profile, with TB closed, should work. Remove the .mbox extension if it's shown.

ephemeris.lappis
ephemeris.lappis Eieren av spørsmålet
more options

Yes, this seems to work. Indeed, MBOX files and TB file seem to be very similar. I don't know if there's some exception cases. Thanks for your answer.

Matt
Matt
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
more options

Valgt løsning

Thunderbird's native storage format is the RD variant of MBOX. I think Google use exactly the same variant, but I am not 100% on that. Apple mail used to also use it, and with the application of a zip program the native mbox files can still be extracted from when Apple mail exports and imorted the same way.

ephemeris.lappis
ephemeris.lappis Eieren av spørsmålet
more options

Hello Good news ! This means that's a really simple way to import or export messages between GMail and Thunderbird. I was looking for exporting a part of different GMail accounts mails before cleaning them, and be able to store them in Thunderbird. Exporting from GMail using labels selections allows to extract limited size MBOX files that can easily be placed in on or more TB profiles folders. I'm sure that's is going to help more people too. Thanks a lot for your explanation. Regards.