thunderbird changing email provider
I have am helping a friend migrate from one emal provider to another. His email account was under Heart Internet umbrella and servers were imap.extencp.co.uk mta.extendcp.co.uk. When we loaded thundebird, it picked up all email off the servers fine. We have now changed hosting account and mail servers are now titan i.e imap.titan.email and smp.titan.email. email account name stays the same. If I change the incoming and outgoing servers in Thunderbird will it now get new emails, while retaining in the inbox the older emails already downloaded from the old servers. Man Thanks Ken
Chosen solution
Help/Troubleshooting, click Open Folder to open the current profile folder, close TB. Go up one level to the Profiles folder, where you should see the previous profile. There, open the Mail/<popserver> or ImapMail/<imapserver> subfolder, and look for mbox files - large files with no extension, named after folders, e.g. Inbox. Copy mbox files into Mail/Local Folders of the current profile, restart TB, and see if the folders appear under Local Folders in the Folder Pane.
Read this answer in context 👍 1All Replies (4)
Copy the current extencp mail to Local Folders for safe keeping, then add the account with titan servers. Once you confirm the new account on titan is working, you can remove the old account.
Hi, Thanks for the reply to my question. Unfortunately, I mucked up. I tried creating a local folder and copying all the (old) emails into it. It did not work. - I suspect because Thunderbird had an error message saying it could not log into the old email server. And of course it could not - the account is not there any more. I wish I had stopped at that stage and sorted it out. So I now have Thunderbird working OK but just with any new emails. I would like to retrieve and import the old emails into a folder. Is there a way.? I notice that Thunderbird has a profiles directory. I am assuming the latest one is where I am now, and the previous one where I was before changing the servers. Can I import into an archive folder on my current thunderbird client, the old emails ? Thanks - (Feeling quite embarrassed) - Ken
Chosen Solution
Help/Troubleshooting, click Open Folder to open the current profile folder, close TB. Go up one level to the Profiles folder, where you should see the previous profile. There, open the Mail/<popserver> or ImapMail/<imapserver> subfolder, and look for mbox files - large files with no extension, named after folders, e.g. Inbox. Copy mbox files into Mail/Local Folders of the current profile, restart TB, and see if the folders appear under Local Folders in the Folder Pane.
sfhowes - Many Thanks for your input. With your notes and guidance I have managed to find the old emails, and managed to copy them into the local folder. This has now given me what I was looking for - Thunderbird with email account from current providers, and a local folder with all his old emails. Many Thanks Again - You saved my total embarrassment. Ken