Thunderbird 1.5 has a built-in tool that allows a user to import address books and locally stored mailboxes and mail folders from Eudora 6.2 over to Thunderbird 1.5. Below are step-by-step instructions on how to go through Thunderbird’s import tool when moving from Eudora 6.2 to Thunderbird 1.5 as your email client. In order to go through the instructions below, make sure that you have both Eudora 6.2 and Thunderbird 1.5 installed on your PC. Once you've successfully migrated your address books and mail messages to Thunderbird 1.5, you can uninstall Eudora 6.2 from your computer. Note that the mail import instructions below will only apply to locally stored mailboxes and mail folders. All mail folders that are stored on the mail server and accessed via IMAP in Eudora 6.2 will not be imported using these instructions. You should be able to access those folders by setting up Thunderbird 1.5 for IMAP, and then connecting to the mail server.
Import the address book
- Start up the Thunderbird application.
- In Thunderbird, go to Tools > Import… to start up the import wizard.
- Select Address Books and click on Next.
- Select Eudora from the pick list, and click on Next. Click on Finish when the address book import is done.
- The address book(s) from Eudora 6.2 should be imported into your Thunderbird 1.5 address book. The default Eudora address book will be listed in the Thunderbird address book as Eudora Nicknames. If you had other address books created in Eudora, these should also be imported, and listed in the Thunderbird address book with the same name they had in Eudora.
Import mail
- Start up the Thunderbird application.
- In Thunderbird, go to Tools > Import… to start up the import wizard.
- Select Mail and click on Next.
- Select Eudora from the pick list, and click on Next. Click on Finish when the mail import is done.
- The locally stored mailboxes and mail folders from Eudora 6.2 will be imported into a folder called Eudora Mail under Local Folders in Thunderbird 1.5.
If a large number of messages are being stored in the mailboxes and mail folders being imported, the process can take extraordinarily long. This is because Eudora 6.2 stores messages differently than Thunderbird 1.5. For one, Eudora 6.2 mailboxes are text files containing the text from all the messages being stored in the mailbox. Thunderbird 1.5, however, stores messages in a binary format. Also, Eudora 6.2 separates attachments from the message text, storing attachments in a designated folder. Thunderbird 1.5, on the other hand, stores the message text and attachments together in its binary format. This means that Thunderbird’s import tool needs to go through every message, put together any attachments with the messages they were sent with, and then compile all of the messages into a binary file that Thunderbird can then read. There are other differences in the message storing formats used by Eudora 6.2 and Thunderbird 1.5, so it is possible that some messages may not look exactly identical in Thunderbird 1.5 after being imported from Eudora 6.2.
One major problem noted with importing mail from Eudora 6.2 to Thunderbird 1.5 is that Thunderbird cannot maintain the message status for the imported messages. Mozilla’s Knowledgebase has an article that talks about working around this issue (see
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Importing_from_Eudora_-_Thunderbird). Unfortunately, the prescribed workaround recommends using a tool called Eudora Rescue, which is not supported by ITS, so users opting to try this tool do so at their own risk. Also, note that there is a licensing fee associated with using this tool for commercial or business use, so if it is being used for a University-owned computer, you will need to pay the licensing fee prior to utilizing Eudora Rescue. The program is free for private, personal use, though, so if you are using it for a personal home computer, then no licensing fee is charged.
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Created: Wed, 28 Mar 2007 5:01pm
Modified: Thu, 29 Mar 2007 3:50pm
