[Dovecot] importing outlook express messages to dovecot imap server

[Stan Hoeppner]

Patrick Nagel put forth on 6/25/2010 1:02 AM:
> Hi,
> 
> On 2010-06-25 03:51 UTC Stan Hoeppner wrote:
>> Angelo Chen put forth on 6/24/2010 10:25 PM:
>>> I think that's one option, but it's around 10G data for the last few
>>> years, and more than 100 folders under outlook express, do you think
>>> that will be fast enough by using Outlook Express copying option to an
>>> imap account?
>>
>> Look at it this way:  One way or another, in one format or another, you
>> will have to copy the data over the network from the PC to the Dovecot
>> server.  If you use the method myself and others have recommended, once
>> the data is copied to the IMAP folders, you are done.
>>
>> Now, if you do it the other way, which is copying raw files over, you then
>> have to convert them to maildir format.  It's a multi-step process.  And
>> could be error prone.
>>
>> The first method is a single step process and is reliable.
> 
> I tried something similar (with Thunderbird) once, and it caused a lot of 
> trouble. We only had around 1.3 GB, IIRC, but thousands of folders. Here is a 
> blog article that I wrote after I got it done with a perl script:
> 
> https://patrick-nagel.net/blog/archives/77

It's interesting that you weren't able/willing to track down the source of the
problem.  It's also interesting how you mention "single drag and drop".  In my
experience, you can't drag/drop _folders_ in Thunderbird at all.  All the
migrations I've done this way required creating new folders on the IMAP server
(Dovecot), group selecting all of the mail in the respective source folder,
and selecting "copy" or "move" to the destination folder.  I couldn't find a
way to drag/drop a folder of group of folders.  Care to share your secret?

I actually did some "man in the middle" transfers of mailboxen from an old
Exchange 5.5 server running IMAP to a Dovecot server using the method I just
described, with TBird being the man in the middle.  No problems, no data loss
or garbling.  Worked fine.  And that old Exchange box was a dinosaur, both
software and hardware.

-- 
Stan