I presume you read and followed the advice as described in the Switching to Thunderbird article?

Make sure you are using Thunderbird 31.8 (check in Help > About Thunderbird). Chances are that it fails here; maybe you downgraded, but now have 2 versions installed, or (more likely) Thunderbird updated itself right after because it is set up that way in the Options > Advanced > Update tab.

Do not try to put copies of the Eudora mailboxes in both Program Files folders, the Thunderbird folder or as a separate folder named "Eudora" on your C drive. These are not proper locations, and your Eudora data should just stay where they are. So try this:

1. Set Thunderbird’s Update settings to Never check for updates (not recommended: security risk), or to Check for updates, but let me choose whether to install them .
2. Uninstall Thunderbird. If asked to remove any your files, don’t do so.
3. Install Thunderbird 31.8 from the link as given in the article. Thunderbird should still work as expected and not update itself (check the version in Help > About).
4. Try to import from Eudora.
5. If this fails either because you have data problems or Thunderbird crashes, repeat the steps above, but try an even older version of Thunderbird instead.
6. Try to import from Eudora.

Does this help? If not, please have a look at this mozillaZine KB article and try what else may be needed. Please report back and describe where things have succeeded or failed.

Tonnes said

I presume you read and followed the advice as described in the Switching to Thunderbird article? Make sure you are using Thunderbird 31.8 (check in Help > About Thunderbird). Chances are that it fails here; maybe you downgraded, but now have 2 versions installed, or (more likely) Thunderbird updated itself right after because it is set up that way in the Options > Advanced > Update tab. Do not try to put copies of the Eudora mailboxes in both Program Files folders, the Thunderbird folder or as a separate folder named "Eudora" on your C drive. These are not proper locations, and your Eudora data should just stay where they are. So try this:

1. Set Thunderbird’s Update settings to Never check for updates (not recommended: security risk), or to Check for updates, but let me choose whether to install them .
2. Uninstall Thunderbird. If asked to remove any your files, don’t do so.
3. Install Thunderbird 31.8 from the link as given in the article. Thunderbird should still work as expected and not update itself (check the version in Help > About).
4. Try to import from Eudora.
5. If this fails either because you have data problems or Thunderbird crashes, repeat the steps above, but try an even older version of Thunderbird instead.
6. Try to import from Eudora.

Does this help? If not, please have a look at this mozillaZine KB article and try what else may be needed. Please report back and describe where things have succeeded or failed.

I have tried your suggestions. If you read the Thunderbird Help file it syas that in all versions later than 18 the Eudora import is broken, hence my downgrade to v18. It is not a question of leaving my Eudora data where it is, as this is a new computer setup and does not have Eudora installed, and can't be installed as it is a 64 bit Win 7 system. Hence I am trying to migrate my Eudora emails from back-ups of the old Eudora system- in other words I have no working Eudora but just copies of the mbx and toc files. I need a method of telling Thunderbird where those files are, but that doesn't appear to be an option in v18 of Thunderbird. It is an option in the newer versions, but as the Eudora import is broken in those versions it doesn't help me. If it is not possible to do this directly from Eudora mailboxes into Thunderbird, I'm interested in any workaround that someone has tried successfully. thanks

What Help file are you referring to? There is and never was a version 18, and I was trying to get clear where the instructions in the (English) article fail (although I have a clue where they do.)

However, I overlooked that Eudora wasn’t installed, sorry. Could you try this?

If Eudora is not installed and you want to use the Thunderbird import wizard, you can change the Windows registry to point to your Eudora files, then run the import wizard.

• Create a .reg file called eudora.reg containing the following lines. Replace H:\\SCRATCH\\Eudoradata with the location of your Eudora data. (note the double backslashes and the blank line)

=== Registry file, adjust file location as required ===

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Qualcomm\Eudora\CommandLine]
"Current"="Anything H:\\SCRATCH\\Eudoradata Anything"
===

• In a Windows command prompt, run "regedit /s eudora.reg".
• Use the Thunderbird import wizard.

Thanks for your help. Sorry about the confusion - I'm emailing from a different computer than the one where the problem exists, and I manged to convert 31.8 to 18 in my memory. The Help file for whatever version you have installed seem to refer to the current online help file, so not much help if you are using the older version. I appreciate your info on the registry entry, but I'm not keen on messing around with reg files unless there is absolutely no other option, so I'll save that option for later. Unless anyone has a better solution, I might just transfer the backup mailbox files to a running version of Eudora and email the contents to Thunderbird. Bit of a pain, but probably the best way to get attachments migrated still connected to the emails.

An alternative to Thunderbird's import wizard is to find a tool to transform your data to mbox format (.mbx), and then use Import Export Tools add-on in Thunderbird to import the mbox files. One such mbox conversion tool for Eudora is Eudora Rescue.

Yes, I'm aware of this option, but I'm also aware that no-one seems to have it to work particularly well, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time for a questionable result. Thanks for pointing it out though.

All suggestions above were not mine, but pending edits to be included in the Switching to Thunderbird article based on positive feedback, and now live. Could you have a look at it again and describe what does not work for you or you would like to see changed/included?