For each of the accounts, you can zip up the related profile folders to send over and have them set up with the data on their machine.
To find out where the accounts are storing the information, go to:
Tools > Account Settings
Then select the Server Settings pane of an account.
Look at the folder path stored in the Local directory. (If you can't see it all, click browse and a pop up will show you the path of where the folder is.)
Then, follow the path to the folder on your system.
The parent will have the following default child folders:
- Drafts.sbd
- Inbox.sbd
- Sent.sbd
- Templates.sbd
Zip it up with your compression/archive tool of choice and email it to the person.
They then extract the folder to a location of their choice or into a similar path as outlined in an earlier step. (Server Settings > Local directory)
They will need to restart Thunderbird for the account manager to remap to the folder.
When setting up Thunderbird, the default Local directory store path is a long chain of folders to where the profile is stored. By setting the folder of choice in the Local directory you can cut that down and even store the information on a different partition or disk.
The above instructions and screenshot are from a Windows XP install of Thunderbird. There might be slight difference on other systems, but the instructions will hold.
If you open the Account Settings menu you should be able to add an new account using Movemail. It should be located in Account Actions under Add Other Accounts. This should then move mail from the spool folder into your inbox.
Personally, I use Dovecot
with Maildir
format directories populated by proccmail
. This allows me to read mail both locally and remotely using the same mailstore. I also provide webmail access using Squirrelmail
.
Best Answer
What I would do is to create a new folder Import in the target profile, then a new subfolder called anything arbitrary (eg Temp), to establish the correct folder structure. After this exit Thunderbird and copy all the mail folders from the source profile into the same place where Temp resides (or create links if the folders are large, but this makes the source mails more vulnerable).
When TB is restarted, all the source profile's e-mails will be available as subfolders of Import and e-mails can be selected and copied at will into the target profile's normal folders (the vulnerability is that the e-mails could be moved by mistake, removing them from the source profile if they are links).
After all the required e-mails have been imported, the source profile copies or links can be removed, but not from TB unless they are copies. Finally remove Temp and Import from Thunderbird.