As to Message Filters: while it is not an automated solution, if you look at your TB profile directory you can find the message filters in a readable format.

Go to <profiledir>/Mail/<accountname>/ and look at the file msgFilterRules.dat. There may be one in the <profiledir>/Mail/LocalFolders/ dir also.

You will find this file to be surprisingly readable. A hard copy of it propped up next to your computer and you can replicate your rules from TB into Evo in very little time, and without worrying "Did I remember that correctly?" You may also notice (as I did) that almost half your filters are obsolete and can safely be discarded....

Interesting. Thanks for the suggestions.

[QUOTE=wan3;3072511]I installed the package alpine, which is the successor of pine. It is a pure text based mailer, which uses the mbox mail format as well as thunderbird does. I did not really work with alpine. I just copied my local thunderbird mails in the mail folder of ...........

Thanks so much for your very helpful article... Just the information I was looking for..

I have a lot of rules for incoming mail. is there anyway to import them or the method of copying the Thunderbird folders will import the rules too?

When I tried this, it didn't work because all the types of files listed in the Evolution Import Assistant when I choose import a single file are greyed out, which means that 'forward' is also greyed out, which means I can do nothing.

When I did this, the zFolders inbox was empty.