Hi Zane
Am 03.02.2025 um 15:31 schrieb Zane B Stein via dovecot <dovecot@dovecot.org>:
My mail was hosted by a site that no longer handles email. I asked them if they could send me a file with all my emails in it and they said sure. I was thinking maybe I would get something I could import into Outlook such as a .pst or .ost file, or perhaps a .csv file.
What I received was a zipped file and when I opened it there were a bunch of folders with emails in them in some strange format (each one with a . in front of it, such as .NEWMAIL ), plus a bunch of files along with the folders such as dovecat.index, dovecatindex.cache, dovecot.index.log2, dovecot.list.inex, divecot.mailbox and others with a dovecot prefix, plus one called maildirsize and one called subscriptions.
I have no idea how to read the emails in this format.
Can someone tell me how I can access the emails in this set of files? Feel free to ask if you need more information before you can answer.
If I need a special program to read the files, is there an easy one available that is user friendly for someone with no experience with dovecot files?
It looks like they exported you the raw dovecot Maildir, which is rare to get from hosting providers.
The good thing about this is, that you could 1:1 import that into an IMAP mail server like dovecot (ideally). The bad thing ist hat you actaully have to setup an own IMAP mail server. :)
Maybe you can find some conversion tools, when you search for convert "Maildir to Outlook", or so.
You can also manually rename those files with the long cryptic ID (which are your mails) to .eml and dann drag-and-drop them into outlook, which should work.
Steven