Migrate Outlook into Thunderbird?

[Keith]

On 7/10/23 4:48 PM, Bo Berglund wrote:
> On Mon, 10 Jul 2023 11:34:36 -0500, Keith <keithw at caramail.com> wrote:
> 

[snipped]

> 
> So I made a test by installing the latest version of ThunderBird on my Win10
> laptop.
> When I started it it asked me to enter account data etc, which I did not.
> Instead I went to Home/Import and selected "Import from Outlook"
> Then I got to a screen where I could select between:
> [v] Accounts and Settings
> [v] Address Books
> [ ] Calendars
> [v] Mail Messages
> 
> There is no way to select *which* mail messages or which PST file to import from
> or the like...
> Apparently it will read *everything* off of Outlook, which means some 15+ GB
> worth of messages (probably millions) and such...
> 
> I just wonder how long such a conversion would take? Especially if the process
> involves "asking" outlook to provide them one by one...
> 
>>>
>>> 2) If I have to migrate on Windows, then in order to go to Ubuntu, can I just
>>> copy the TB profile to the correct place on Ubuntu and point TB to it there and
>>> it will work? I.e. are file formats etc compatible Linux/Window
>>
>> It should, but I'm not sure the file permissions will be set correctly.
>> Usually, files copied from a NTFS or *FAT filesystem will have +x bit
>> set and will be world readable. Hopefully, Thunderbird will set the
>> permissions correctly when importing from the zip file.
>>
> That would be the next step, but I wonder about the timing here...
> 
> 
This support page from mozilla.com about importing to a linux 
thunderbird version from a windows machine that doesn't have outlook 
installed on it anymore seems on point:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1404120

"As Thunderbird's import uses a working Outlook install to get messages, 
contacts, calendar etc. I think you will have to go out and get one of 
the PST conversion tools to convert what it contains to calendar, email 
mbox files and contacts."

So that could take a long time, but I don't know for sure.

There's a myriad of windows tools that reportedly will convert .pst 
files into mbox, but I couldn't tell you which one would be the best. I 
did see the email archive program, Mailstore (www.mailstore.com) 
referred to in another post about importing Outlook mail and the 
thunderbird user said it did the job, so you might check into that. Its 
home product is listed as free and it's "Made in Germany" (if that 
qualification is important to you.)

On the Linux side, an apt search shows a couple of packages, pst-utils 
and pff-tools, that supposedly can read pst files and export them into 
the mbox format. No experience with them, though.

-- 
Keith