Tux Training

Export Kmail into Thunderbird

April 8, 2008, 7:51 pm

Importing mail from Kmail into Thunderbird can be a huge pain. It took some searching and reading some blogs that were not very well worded to figure this out. And even then I had to play around a bit. The main problem is that Thunderbird uses mbox format to store emails and kmail, by default, creates all of your folders and subfolders in the maildir format. First thing first, make sure you have Thunderbird installed and setup with your email conneciton settings. Then lets go ahead and get 2 file manager windows open. One should be open to your Kmail folder that stores all your emails. These can be a multitude of directories depending on the install. On my opensuse box it was in: /home/username/.kde/share/apps/kmail/mail/ on other systems it may be in ~/Mail/ or ~/.Mail/. The other window should have your Thunderbird mail folder open. This is generally in ~/.thunderbird/[randomstuff].default/Mail. Generally speaking most people store their Thunderbird emails in the following directory, /home/username/.thunderbird/kjc1e1t2.default/Mail/Local Folders/.

In Kmail

Right Click in your folder listing and create a New Folder.
When it prompts you for the name and the type of folder make sure you select “mbox”
move your emails from your Inbox into this newly created folder.
Close Kmail.

In Your File Browser That’s Open to Kmail’s mail folder

You should now see a single file named what you just named you mbox folder.
Right Click This File and select Copy

In Your File Browser That’s Open to Thunderbird’s mail folder

Create a new directory and name it as you wish, but be sure to add .sbd at the end of the file name so Thunderbird knows how to read it.
1. Example: Exported.sbd
Right Click in the newly created folder and Paste the file from the Kmail folder

Now open Thunderbird and ensure those files are there. If they are not close and re-open thunderbird again to make sure. If you do this for any further directories continue to place the mbox file in this newly created directory. You can go ahead and organize the files as you wish, I created new folders within thunderbird and simply moved my emails into those new directories.

This should be it. If anyone has any corrections they would like to make please let me know, as this ended up being a more confusing experience than it needed to be and I may have missed some steps.