Hi Roger,

What are you switching from?

I recently did an upgrade to a new version of thunderbird and stressed about nothing to import.

It turns out it is just a matter of copying the files across (including address books) and Thunderbird read them.

Ofcourse, I had backups etc. but the key directory for data files is gobledegook.default

Marghanita


On 10/10/18 17:17, Roger Clarke wrote:
Thanks for the feedback on my enquiry about an email-client!
(I received emails from multiple people, on and off list).

As recommended, I've trialed Thunderbird.

Remaining problems (2) and (3) below I might be able to live with.

But problem (1) is serious, and I can't see how I could cope with it.

Any assistance gratefully received!

________

(1) Getting access to attachments (THE CURRENT PARTY-STOPPER)

     Thunderbird is just as bad as Apple Mail, in that all attachments
     are buried in huge, deep-nested directories, still encoded.

     Searches on a known filename don't find it, in either Spotlight or
     EasyFind. so it's impossible to locate received files!
     ('Someone sent you a file called squiggle.xyz.  Did you get it?')

     No useful info turned up in the bare-bones documentation, nor from
     multiple searches in Thunderbird fora.

     An add-on once existed, was broken, and has not been revived.


     It requires many wasted keystrokes to get a copy out,
     and that has to be done inside each and every message.
     (Find message, open list to see the filenames, double-click to
     get a pop-up, instruct it to save, select folder;  it's possible
     to set it to save future files of that filetype with a double-click)

     (Even then it's behaviour is inconsistent.  For jpg, png, pdf, txt
     and zip, it displays the save-as setting in Preferences/Attachments.
     *But* for txt, doc, docx, odt and tiff, and perhaps others that I
     haven't tried, it doesn't show them, but does save them on request).
Recovering the wasted storage-space requires much the same again.
     (Find message, open list to see the filenames, select Save/Delete
     at bottom-right, click OK).

     Yesterday was a quiet-enough day, but 24 of the non-spam emails
     I received had attachments that I needed to access and evaluate,
     and 10 if them I need to be able to find easily by name or directory.
     That would be 40 clicks to move 10 files + 96 to delete 24 files -
     not counting the searching for messages.  Everyday, forever.

     All it needs is:
     -   two nested options in the settings
         -   copy all incoming attachments to nominated attachments folder
             -   delete after copying
     -   a small routine, running on every attachment to every incoming
         email, that calls functions that are already in the package

(2) Filtering incoming messages into themed mailboxes, and then
     Knowing which mailboxes contain newly-fetched mail (sort-of okay)

     Thunderbird shows the names of mailboxes in bold if
     any message, fetched at any time in the past, has not been opened.

     Thunderbird shows the names of mailboxes in bold *and blue* if
     one or more messages have arrived since the mailbox was last opened.

     *But* a Quit and Restart of Thunderbird loses the vital blue marking
     (although not the far-less-useful bold marking).

     Admittedly Tbird appears pretty stable and hence may not have to be
     frequently Quit and Restarted, as the execrable PostBox does.

(3) Importing existing mailboxes (maybe fixable)

     Thunderbird is worse than Apple Mail, in that Tools / Import fails
     to find Apple Mail mailboxes ('No mailboxes were found to import').
     Ah, deep down in the documentation it owns up to not importing
     from later than Apple Mail v5.  It's currently at v10!

     There are no add-ons to support import.

     No useful info turned up in the bare-bones documentation, nor from
     multiple searches in Thunderbird fora.

     A link correspondent has used and reco's https://www.aid4mail.com/

_________


--
Marghanita da Cruz
Telephone: 0414-869202
Email:  [email protected]
Website: http://ramin.com.au

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