SOLUTION!: Converting/Exporting/Transferring Thunderbird for Windows to Mac OS X
fromablueplanet
Thunderbird mail store from Windows to OS X. "Jon" posted a helpful
reply (thank you by the way) but I did some digging on Google myself
and found a solution.
I used Thunderbird 1.5.0.5 on Windows XP and 1.5.0.4 on OS X for this
process.
This link is a review of Thunderbird and had the very insightful
comment:
"This cross-platform functionality allows one to take the mail store
(i.e., all saved mail, sent mail, address book, etc.) that Thunderbird
uses from one operating system to another without compatibility issues.
For example, if you start using Thunderbird on Windows and then later
decide to get a Mac, you can take the mail store from your Windows
machine and copy it over to your Mac and have it work seamlessly."
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/apps/thunderbird.ars/2
Without further ado, here is the solution. It's really not
"converting" or "exporting" but a simple straight transfer of data. I
include the other two terms in case someone is trying to google on
those terms for this answer.
1: On the Windows machine, backup the following folder to a USB drive
or similar removable media:
c:\document and settings\<user>\application
data\thunderbird\profiles\XXXXXXXX.default
where <user> is the account you login to Windows, and XXXXXXXX is a
eight-character randomly generated string created when you first setup
your profile in Thunderbird.
2: On your Mac machine, launch Thunderbird and create a dummy email
account. In my case, my mail provider is Earthlink, so I created a
POP3 mail account. This dummy account will create the necessary
directory structure to copy the Windows files. Exit Thunderbird.
3: On the Mac, click on your user's Home icon in Finder (the icon is a
picture of, well, a home) and drill down to
~/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles. (If you're clicking on your Startup
Disk icon, you need to go to
~/Users/<user>/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles.
4: Note that under Profiles, the profile folder name is
"ZZZZZZZZ.default". We're not going to delete this profile directory.
First make a backup in case anything goes wrong and you need to re-do.
Then delete all files and folders --underneath-- the profile
directory but keep "ZZZZZZZZ.default" itself intact.
5: Copy the Windows files and folders underneath the "XXXXXXXX.default"
into the "ZZZZZZZZ.default" directory and re-launch Thunderbird.
You should immediately see all your messages in your Inbox, Sent, Draft
folders and any subfolders you may have created. Also check your
email account settings under the Tools menu --- everything should be
intact.
I'll be checking every setting on the Mac to make sure everything has
been properly transferred over. But from the first few minutes so far
that I've been using Thunderbird, it looks like everything is intact
and working!
Next challenge: importing my Windows Internet Explorer favorites into
Camino's bookmarks. I'm sure that'll be trivial given the popularity
of both browsers. Actually my Windows browser is called NetCaptor,
which is tabbed browser built on top of IE 6.0 (Microsoft is going to
introduced tabbed browsing, finally, in version 7.0, which is still a
beta right now). One nice feature of NetCaptor is saving a group of
bookmarks that can later be opened to multiple tabs with a single
click. I would sorely miss that if it's not in Camino.
Aside from other little annoyances on OS X that there is no direct
translation that I can see from Windows (how do I minimize ALL windows
on a Mac?), I really do love my new Macbook.
I'm glad I "switched". (I say that in quotes, because I also installed
Parallels so I can load job-specific apps that require Windows like my
Cisco VPN client, Lotus Notes and Sametime Instant Messaging.)
It's good to have it all.
Best regards,
Roland Thomas