Importing email into GMail part 3

So following part 1 and part 2, we've moved all the email stored remotely into GMail, but now what to do with the email in Thunderbird's local folders?

Well again Apple Mail comes to the rescue. We need to import the Thunderbird folders in Mail, and then we can drag and drop into GMail.

To do this safely, I went into the profile folder where Thunderbird keeps its mail

~/library/Thunderbird/profiles/xyz123.default/Mail/Local Folders

and in there found the items with email: Inbox and Sent. Copy them elsewhere, and stick a .mbox on them ie so they are named Inbox.mbox and Sent.mbox.

Then go into Mail and go into File>Import Mailboxes and select 'other'. Navigate to the folder where your mboxs are. They will be greyed out. Don't worry. Select 'continue' and they will be imported anyway.

After a few minutes they'll show up in Mail and you can then drag and drop into GMail.

Moving and migrating email to GMail

I needed to help a family member move their email from a very space limited email account into a nice roomy comfortable GMail account.

No problem I thought, Thunderbird will do the job. Load both accounts as IMAP folders, and drag and drop.

Well, no.

The email moves thats true, but Thunderbird does not save the dates of the emails. All the email shows up as brand new.

Not good!

Fortunately being a Mac user I was able to use Apple Mail to move the emails over.