Thunderbird PC to Mac migration solution

Since moving from Eudora to Thunderbird on the PC, I've become a huge fan of the Mozilla e-mail client, so I definitely wanted to continue using it as I moved to the Mac. This proved more difficult than I expected but there's a reasonably simple solution for Thunderbird v1.x (it's untested with v2.x). Simply moving the Thunderbird profile from the PC to the Mac doesn't fly (or at least it didn't for me); Thunderbird just hangs up when it tries to access these files. Instead, the process is somewhat more granular. Here's an overview, and if anyone wants more details, feel free to contact me.

1. Install Thunderbird on your Mac.
2. Open Thunderbird, and create your main mail account. Don't download any mail yet; just create the account.
3. Copy your Thunderbird profile directory from your PC to your Mac. (In Windows 2000 and XP, the default profile locations are under "Application Data", which is a hidden folder. In Explorer (i.e. double-click My Computer) click: Tools → Folder Options → View (tab) → Show Hidden files and folders.)
4. In this folder (on your Mac) and all its subfolders, you must move any file with a ".msf" extension to the Trash. I created a little Automator workflow to do this (called "Move .msf to Trash", contained in this zip file), which you can download (Ctrl-click, Save As...). To use it, open the folder in Finder, select all the files (Command-A) and then run the Automator script. You must do this for every folder in which .msf files appear.
5. Now copy "Local Folders" to your Thunderbird Mail folder on your Mac.
6. Open Thunderbird -- you should be done!

If you have more than one mail account, create all of them in step 2 (but don't download any mail). Then you can copy your old mail files into the directory structures that Thunderbird creates upon account creation.

You can also copy over these files to preserve your settings from your PC:

• Filters -- msgFilterRules.dat (goes into your Local Folder)
• Address Book - abook,mab (goes into your profile directory)
• Junk Training - training.dat (goes into your profile directory)

Note that this procedure doesn't save all of your settings and whatnot, which necessitates a little monkeying around, but it gets the bulk of the job done. If anyone knows a more complete procedure, please let me know!

[Updated 4/20/2007 22:23 EDT: Fixed the link to the "Move .msf to Trash" workflow. Made clear that this fix applies to Thunderbird 1.x.]

Comments

[Dave]

I'm glad this worked out so well for you, Ian, and thanks for the extra hints! :-)

[ifan]

Thanks for the tips...
I'm a mac virgin, just purchased a new black macbook yesterday and spent all weekend moving files from my old PC notebook.

I was wondering if I can migrate thousands of mails to mac.. until I bumped into this article.. and it worked very well...

again.. thanks a lot man... you rock!

[Emilio]

Yesterday I simply removed the contents from the Thunderbird directory on my father's old iBook (my brother brought him a MacBook Pro), placed there the contents of the TBird directory from my old windows pc (currently being repaired/upgrade) after removing the .msf files, started TBird and after letting it rebuild everything now it works perfectly...

It even copied the news, RSS and additional components...

[Emilio]

BTW, my next computer will probably be a Mac Mini...

[Dave]

Thanks, Emilio. Once the TB files are on a Mac, it's easy to move the profile directory around as needed. The trick is getting the files from a PC to a Mac in the first place!

We have a Mac Mini as part of our home theatre set-up and it works phenomenally well. My one concern is whether Apple intends to continue supporting/building the Mac Mini hardware at all. I suspect they intend to migrate the functionality I really care about from the Mac Mini into Apple TV.

[Nathan Phillips]

What if I already have downloaded emails?

it looks like most of the files have been created.

[Dave Cassidy]

If you have downloaded mail in your Inbox, for example, then you should simply rename that mailbox in the Thunderbird file structure to a different name, such as "Inbox-new", or rename the mailbox you're importing. Then, when all of your mail is imported into Thunderbird, simply copy the mail from "Inbox-new" to "Inbox".

Hi Dave,

Thanks for this fix - haven't quite got it working yet...

Referring to your last comment (Feb 06 08) - it won't let me rename my Inbox, its greyed out. How do I do this on a Mac?

Thanks,

Jamie

[Dave]

You're almost there, Jamie! You rename the mailbox in the OSX Finder, not in Thunderbird itself. To do so, shut down Thunderbird, click on the Finder and open a Finder window (Command-N). Now navigate to the location of your Thunderbird mailboxes, which is usually in /Library/Thunderbird/Profiles?.default/Mail. Dig around in there until you see
INBOX
INBOX.mozmsgs (a folder)

Rename these to whatever you like, such as:
ILIKECHOCOLATE
ILIKECHOCOLATE.mozmsgs

Now reopen Thunderbird. You should see a mailbox called "ILIKECHOCOLATE". You can now move you old Inbox/Inbox.mozmsgs files into your Thunderbird file structure (again, using the Finder) and all should be well.

[Jamie]

Hi again,

When I looked at the finder folder, all I could see was Inbox and Inbox.msf, no Inbox.mozmsgs.

If it helps, the version of Thunderbird I am running is version 2.0.0.9 (20071031)

Thanks again for all your help,

Jamie