Like most of you, I waste countless hours (okay, minutes) every day, ‘junk’ing e-mails my spam filter misses. Lately, I’ve been getting a ton of Critical Investor Alerts, which I guess slip through with their embedded graphics. Check out how this spam starts though…
Agggh.
Anyway, I thought that would amuse you. But here’s the real reason for this post. TECHIES I NEED YOU. A few weeks ago I asked y’all if I should make “the switch.” And I did! Got a shiny Macbook Pro whose screenly prompted died after five days while I was in Grant Park trying to liveblog Lollapalooza! (Chicago Genius Bar said “random hardware malfunction” … we’ll replace … blah blah blah…)
Anyway, I finally got my replacement and am having difficultly moving my PC Thunderbird mail archives to my Mac. Thunderbird to Thunderbird’s supposed to be easy! I followed this dude’s instructions, but after merging my inbox (w/out .msf files) I get an error that won’t let me check mail anymore. Anyway, who wants to hold my hand through this? If you succeed in helping me get my old mail on my Mac, I have lots of fun prizes I could give you. (Yeah, I’m desperate.)
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good thing those macs never crash! their screens just die after five days and apple is so good to their cult-like customers, they refuse to make a product not filled with proprietary garbage. good buy though, i’m sure ben gibbard swears by them.
ive had my mac for about 3 years now and it hasn’t died. i couldn’t be more satisfied with it. what then, dave?
Don’t let this post turn into a Hatin’-On Mac-Fest. Either you dig ‘em or you don’t, but no need to be hatin’ on a man’s (or womyn’s) hardware.
Pay the $99 to join Pro-Care. This would cover your transfer from PC to Mac (that would include your email). The membership also allows you to go to all those free seminars at the shiny new Apple building, and one on one instruction if you need it.
http://www.apple.com/retail/procare/
Hi Scott,
This would be easier if I knew what the error message said and whether your email is safely on your Mac, since the ability to receive new mail and to view mail you’ve already downloaded are two separate problems. Regardless, it may be best to start from scratch.
1. Disconnect both your Mac and PC from the internet and open Thunderbird on both.
2. Create an email account identical to your PC’s on your Mac. Make sure all of the settings are the same. (If you already have your email and just can’t receive new email, a simple typo here could be the problem.)
2a. You may, at this point, try to simply receive mail with your account, but be sure to check “Leave messages on server” under Account Settings > Server Settings. This way, if something gets messed up, your messages will still be available once you get everything right.
3. Quit Thunderbird on your PC, and use these directions to connect your two computers over ethernet (or do whatever you did to transfer files in the first place):
http://www.apple.com/macosx/switch/howto/network.html
4. On your Mac Thunderbird, go to Tools > Import. Select “Mail;” then “Eudora;” then navigate through the dialog box to where your email is stored on your PC. (If you don’t know where that is, it is listed as “Local directory” under Account Settings > Server Settings.) This should copy all of your mail from your PC to your Mac.
Alternatively, this might work:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Category:Migration_%28mail%29
Good luck!
Yeah, good thing you got that Mac. You’d totally have nothing but problems transferring your messages from one PC to another PC.
i won’t bash on macs in this post (although they suck the root) but i just have to say: the mac mail program is the worst, headache inducing nightmare in the living world.
except for (insert something witty)….
Thanks Paul.
I’m still at a loss, though.
I have Thunderbird up and running on my Mac, and (via Lacie drive) put my Thunderbird Mail directories on my Mac desktop. But I’m not sure how to import from there. They don’t seem to be mbox format?
“i won’t bash on macs in this post…”
And then you proceed to…
Moron.
techies use pcs. no but seriously have fun with that.
Love to see the threatened PC users up in arms. mbox is not proprietary, jackasses. Problem rests in old Mozilla code vs. new mbox code. Same problem would happen with any old to new program switch
Anyway:
1. Find the Thunderbird mail source folders (on the PC, they should be in Documents and Settings / Username / Application Settings / Thunderbird / Mail (or something close to that – I’m typing this from memory).
2. Copy them to your mac desktop
3. In Mail.app, click Import, select Other, then select one of the mail folders that contain the Inbox.mbox files (and many others).
4. Click Choose. You’re choosing the folder, not any of the files contained within it. Folder should be called Local Folders for the main inbox. If you used multiple mailboxes, the rest will be named by host (i.e. mail.yourhost.com).
If it gives you any static beyond that, check here:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050402143519725
(Learn to love the Mac OS X hints website by the way)
One tactic may be to import to Microsoft Entourage, and then import from Entourage to Mail.
If my previous tactic didn’t work because, as you said, none of the mailboxes seem to be in .mbox format, try this:
?
? Each mailbox has three pieces to it – i.e. inbox.sbd, inbox.msf and inbox with no extension.
? Take the file with no extension, hold down the Option key (so it also stays in the folder) and drag it to the desktop.
? Rename this copy with .mbox as the file extension. For example, inbox becomes inbox.mbox.
? Open Mail.app and select File: Import, choose Other, and navigate to the desktop and click Choose. Choose the file you just renamed. Your mailbox(es) should appear in the import window and will import into Mail.app.
Email me if you need more help.
Or you could just use Thunderbird for OS X?
Speaking of Cursive…
Anyone heard the new album? It’s…interesting.
“glass handed kites” would be a pretty cool band name.
i know this isn’t what you want to hear, but from what i can tell, thunderbird for mac is really, really bad. i’m not sure why – it’s mozilla who make such a good browser.
anyway, the aple os x mail program is great (and i know entourage is supposed to be fine as well).
i use apple mail and have never had any problems (4 years). i once imported old mail from eudora and that went fine as well. i can’t speak directly to thunderbird but it’s worth considering making the (not particularly life-changing) switch to a different mail program.
well thanks for queering the deal on that hot new gaming stock …
don’t know if it just takes some getting used to, but the new cursive isn’t really doing it for me. maybe the ugly organ was just too good. anyway, my first comment was just to bash macs, but the truth is most things that should be simple, on pc and mac, are plagued with obstacles that don’t make any sense. it’s pretty nice, though, that because of your popular blog, you have your own personal tech support army.
I love the new cursive album.
Do you think saddle creek will make an announcement on their website denouncing the capitalists who are trying to exploit cursive’s fanbase for their own profit with their shady stock marketing schemes?
I predict that the next blogworthy genre of music will be “Vague Wave.” I’m already working on my “Post Vague Wave” album.