"Incoming server already exists"

[Mark Filipak]

Symptom.
Error Title: "Error Creating Account"
Error Text: "Incoming server already exists" [OK]

I've "retired" 2 mbox accounts by creating 2 new maildir accounts,
moving the existing mbox messages to the new maildir accounts, then
removing the old mbox accounts. This has worked twice. (Note that I did
these one-at-a-time, restarting TBird at each step, for each old mbox
account.)

When attempting to "retire" a third mbox account using the exact same
procedure, I get the error message above. I have not found a workaround.

Any help? Ideas? Appreciated...
Mark.

[dillinger]

You're probably trying to use 2 accounts on the same server. Try
renaming the old account first.
Anyway, for pop3 the export/delete/create/import route is probably the
best way. For imap, it is much easier: for each account, go to
about:config and change @mozilla.org/msgstore/berkeleystore;1 to
@mozilla.org/msgstore/maildirstore;1
Restart Thunderbird immediately and all messages will be downloaded again.
You can delete the old "folder" files from your profile afterwards.