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By SkyEye at 2007-06-24 15:11
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I know some of you are asking why, rather than how, regarding migration from Thunderbird to Evolution. Maybe that can explain why there are lot of Evolution to Thunderbird migration guides, but not many vice-versa. Fear not, here is a guide to assist who dare to migrate from Thunderbird to Evolution. The techniques described here are tested with the newer versions of both the software, namely Thunderbirs 2.0.0.4 and Evolution 2.10.2.
I simply think Mozilla people are doing a great job with both Firefox and Thunderbird. From my point of view Firefox is the best general purpose web browser around. It beats most proprietary browser in speed, stability, security, modularity, etc. However Fxs' counterpart in e mail business is not yet there at the helm. Thunderbird is a great application especially with Lightning addon, but from my point of view it's not there yet where Evolution is.
Evolution on the othet hand, has been the most popular Linux mail client during the past few years. It was started as a project of Ximian, but now a part of GNOME. Evolution now has a Windows XP version too. To be more true to the point Evolution is not just a mail client, it's a groupware application. It comes very competitive to the Microsoft Outlook. If you are looking for a replacement from Microsoft Outlook, then Evolution is your best bet without a doubt. Evolution comes with many rich features like calendar, appointments, tasks, memos, signature management, encryption, filters, Palm device support, developer platform, LDAP support, even Microsoft Exchange Server connectivity and lot more. Evolution is more feature rich, advanced, stable, less memory consuming than Thunderbird. Oneday Thunderbird might be "the" e mail client for Linux, but today Evolution is simply "the" client.
So here are the steps first, then I'lll describe them more (I assume both Thunderbird and Evolution are installed. If not you might want to do it at this point).
1. Backup your .thunderbird directory
2. Configure Evolution
3. Export your contacts from Thunderbird and import them from Evolution
4. Import your mail archives from Thunderbird to Evolution
Yes, it's that simple. So let's now dig into details.
1. Safety First (Backup your data)
Please backup the data before you try anything. Especially don't forget to get a copy of .thunderbird directory (located in the home directory, usually). All your current mails which you view withing Thunderbird are in this directory. So it is important to back this up.
2. Configure Evolution
Create the necessary accounts in Evolution. How to configure accounts in Evolution is out of the scope of this howto. So I'll just assume that you created the desired accounts and relevant folders. For example I added my Gmail account and added several folder like Fun, Blog Comments, Personal, etc. to my Inbox folder. This is to mimick the configuration I had in Thunderbird. Now we are set to go.
3. Import Contacts
From Thunderbird you can export your contacts (Address Book) to several formats. Since our aim here is to import these back into Evolution, use either csv or ldif. This is how you do it.
In Thunderbird,
* Go to Address Book
* Select the address book you want to export, then
* Click "Export" from "Tools" menu (Tools --> Export)
* In the dialog give a name and a location to save the export
* Select either "Coma Separated" or "LDIF" as type
* Then click "save" to export
Now that exporting is compleeted, we can move into import these from Evolution
In Evolution,
* Go to Contacts Window View
* Click File --> Import
* Go ahead and select "import a single file" option when asked
* Select the file we created when exporting from Thunderbird
* Then import the contacts
Note: It's better to create a new address book to import the contacts, but it's rather your choice.
Now the contacts are imported and ready to go. So let us move to the next step.
4. Import mail archives
Now let's migrate your existing mails to Evolution. Thunderbird uses standars "mbox" format for mail folder, which is the most commonly used format in Linux. Your Thunderbird mail archives are at ~/.thunderbird/xxxxxxxx.default/Mail/ (where xxxxxxxx will a different alphanumeric string). In this directory you'll have directories according to your mail accounts. In my case it's /.thunderbird/xxxxxxxx.default/Mail/Local\ Folders/Inbox.sbd/
There will be two types of files there. Files without an extention and files with .msf extention. What we need are the files without extentions. Eg: Fun, Tech, etc.
In Evolution,
* Go to mail window view
* Click File --> Import
* Go ahead and select "import a single file" option when asked
* Select the file (mail archive) you want to import and select a location to be imported.
Eg: I imported "Fun" archive (not Fun.msf) into a directory named "Fun"
* Repeat the last step for every archive you have
Done! Now you are ready to go. Your mails and contacts are now successfully migrated to Evolution.
Whenever you want to backup your Evolution mail archives they are at ~/.evolution/mail/
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