path: root/doc/kmail/importing.docbook

<chapter id="importing">

<chapterinfo>
<authorgroup>
<author>
<firstname>Daniel</firstname>
<surname>Naber</surname>
<affiliation><address>
<email>[email protected]</email>
</address></affiliation>
</author>
<author>
<firstname>David</firstname>
<surname>Rugge</surname>
<affiliation><address>
<email>[email protected]</email>
</address></affiliation>
</author>
<!-- TRANS:ROLES_OF_TRANSLATORS -->
</authorgroup>
<date>2002-10-03</date>
<releaseinfo>1.5</releaseinfo>
</chapterinfo>

<title>Using other Mailbox Files with &kmail;</title>

<para>&kmail; offers an import tool for the messages and address books of some
other email clients. You can access it using <menuchoice><guimenu>Tools</guimenu>
<guimenuitem>Import...</guimenuitem></menuchoice>. Please make sure that you 
compact your folders in the other email client, no matter if you are going to use
the import utility or if you are going to copy files manually.
You only need to read this chapter if this tool does not work for you.</para>

<para>This section is for all of the users who need to move email messages
from their previous email client over to &kmail;. &kmail; can store its
messages using <quote>mbox</quote> or <quote>maildir</quote> formats, which
are the most widely-used mailbox formats on &UNIX; systems. Mbox mailboxes
store messages in one file, identifying where messages start and end with a
<literal>From</literal> line (do not mix this up with the
<literal>From:</literal> header that contains the message's sender); 
Maildir uses one file per message.  For many &UNIX; email clients, all you
must do is move your mailboxes to <filename
class="directory">~/Mail</filename> (or make <filename
class="symlink">Mail</filename> a symbolic link to the folder containing
your mailboxes), make sure they are writable by your user, and launch
&kmail;. The mailboxes should now show up correctly in &kmail;.</para>

<para>Please have a look at the
<ulink url="http://kmail.kde.org/tools.html">Tools section of &kmail;'s
homepage</ulink> first, to see if there is a tool that imports your mailbox
and maybe even address book.</para>

<warning><para>Do not use a second email client that accesses the files in
<filename class="directory">~/Mail</filename> while &kmail; is running or
you might lose messages. This section only explains how to import mailboxes
to &kmail; once; it is not useful to you if you're planning to use several
email clients for your mailboxes in the future.</para></warning>

<variablelist>

<varlistentry>
<term><application>Eudora Lite</application>/<application>Eudora
Pro</application></term>
<listitem>
<para><application>Eudora</application> uses the mbox format in its mail
files. To use them with &kmail;, make sure that your
<application>Eudora</application> mailboxes have been compacted, then copy the
<literal role="extension">.mbx</literal> files (&Windows;
<application>Eudora</application>) or <application>Eudora</application> mailbox
files (&Mac; <application>Eudora</application>) to your <filename
class="directory">~/Mail</filename> folder. You do not need to copy the
<filename>index</filename> files. Once you start &kmail;, the mailboxes should
appear in the Folders pane and the messages should be accessible in the Headers
pane.</para>
<para>If messages do not appear in the Headers pane, your mailbox files may
still contain &Windows; or &Mac; line-feed characters. Use your favorite
text editor, the <application>recode</application> command or a scripting
language to change the &Windows; or &Mac; line feeds to &UNIX; line
feeds.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>

<varlistentry>
<term><application>Mailsmith</application></term>
<listitem>
<para><application>Mailsmith</application> runs on &Mac; and uses its own database
format; however it is  possible to export mail into mbox format using
<menuchoice><guimenu>File</guimenu><guimenuitem>Export
Mail</guimenuitem></menuchoice> on a 
selected mailbox or on selected messages.  Once the messages have been exported, translate 
the &Mac; line breaks to &UNIX; line breaks using your favorite editor, or using the following 
command under &Linux;:</para>

<para><userinput><command>cat</command> <option>mail-mac.txt</option> 
| perl -e 'while (&lt;STDIN&gt;) { s/\r/\n/gi; print $_ ;}'  &gt; mail-unix.txt</userinput></para>

<para>&kmail; will only recognize mboxes placed directly in the <filename class="directory">~/Mail/</filename>
folder. This means that  a folder hierarchy cannot be preserved by simply moving files into the 
<filename class="directory">~/Mail/</filename> folder, but will need to be reconstructed
within &kmail; manually.</para>

</listitem>
</varlistentry>

<varlistentry>
<term>MMDF</term>
<listitem>
<para>This format is close enough to the mailbox format that &kmail; should be
able to use these mailboxes if you just copy them to your
<filename class="directory">~/Mail</filename> folder; however, MMDF mailboxes
have not been tested with &kmail;, so your results may vary.  If you can get
this format to work with &kmail;, please let us know so we can include more
specific directions in the next documentation release.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>

<varlistentry>
<term>MH mailboxes</term>
<listitem>
<para>MH mailboxes are directories containing files that correspond to each
message in that mailbox.  A shell script to convert MH mailboxes to mbox
mailboxes, <command>mh2kmail</command>, is included at least in the source
releases of &kmail;, but maybe not in the packaged releases. Running this script
on a MH folder will convert it to an mbox file.  We strongly suggest that you
back up your MH mail folders before you use this script.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>

<varlistentry>
<term>Forte <application>Agent</application></term>
<listitem>
<para>In <application>Agent</application>:</para>
<procedure>
<step>
<para>Select the messages to export</para>
</step>
<step>
<para>Select <menuchoice><guimenu>FILE</guimenu><guimenuitem>SAVE MESSAGES
AS</guimenuitem></menuchoice></para>
</step>
<step>
<para>Mark the <guilabel>UNIX FORMAT</guilabel> and <guilabel>SAVE
RAW</guilabel> boxes</para>
</step>
<step>
<para>Give File a  <literal role="extension">.txt</literal> extension and
save.</para>
</step>
</procedure>

<para>In &kde;:</para>

<procedure>
<step>
<para>Move the previously-saved file to the correct <filename
class="directory">~/Mail</filename> folder</para>
</step>
<step>
<para>Rename file without <literal role="extension">.txt</literal>
extension</para>
</step>
</procedure>
<para>When you open &kmail; the new folder with appropriate messages will be
there.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>

<varlistentry>
<term>&Netscape; Mail</term>
<listitem>

<para>If you are using &Netscape; 4.x, the mail files should be found
in <filename class="directory">~/nsmail</filename>; if you are using
&Netscape; 6.x, they're buried in a folder deep in the <filename
class="directory">~/.mozilla</filename> subfolder, something like:
<filename
class="directory">/home/user_name/.mozilla/user_name/2ts1ixha.slt/Mail/Mail/server_name</filename>
(the <filename class="directory">2ts1ixha.slt</filename> string will
probably vary, so check it on your own system.)  The <filename
class="directory">[...]/Mail/Mail</filename> folder contains one
subfolder for each account from which you receive mail through
Netscape (&eg; <filename
class="directory">[...]/Mail/Mail/math.university.edu</filename>);
you will need to copy files from each of them if you want everything to
be accessible under &kmail;.</para>

<para>If you have no subfolders, just copy all of the &Netscape;
files to <filename class="directory">~/Mail</filename>, make sure
that they are writable (only by your user, of course), and restart
&kmail;: all of the messages will now appear in &kmail; folders.
(Note that if you use a command like <command>cp
<parameter>*</parameter> <parameter>~/Mail</parameter></command>, you
should follow it with <command>rm <option>-f</option>
<parameter>~/Mail/*.msf</parameter></command>; every &Netscape; 6
folder has a corresponding <filename>.msf</filename> file, and if you
do not get rid of them you will have a bunch of spurious empty
folders.)</para>

<para>If you were using subfolders under &Netscape; (&eg; a main
folder called <replaceable>Work</replaceable> with subfolders called
<replaceable>Jim</replaceable> and <replaceable>Nancy</replaceable>),
there are additional steps required. First, create the main folder
(<replaceable>Work</replaceable>) in &kmail; and create a temporary
child folder under it (by right-clicking on the folder name and
selecting <guilabel>Create child folder</guilabel>); it does not
matter what you call this folder -- <replaceable>dummy</replaceable>
or the default <replaceable>unnamed</replaceable>, for example. Once
a child folder has been requested, &kmail; creates a hidden folder
in <filename class="directory">~/Mail</filename> called (in this
example) <filename class="directory">.Work.directory</filename>. You
can then copy your &Netscape; subfolder files
(<replaceable>Jim</replaceable> and <replaceable>Nancy</replaceable>)
into <filename class="directory">~/Mail/.Work.directory</filename>,
and restart &kmail;; the child folders will appear under the main
folder <replaceable>Work</replaceable>. Of course, this procedure may
be extended for sub-subfolders, to any depth. (You can remove the
temporary child folders afterwards, unless it amuses you to have a
<replaceable>Work</replaceable> subfolder called
<replaceable>dummy</replaceable>.)</para>

</listitem>
</varlistentry>

<varlistentry>
<term><application>Pegasus Mail</application></term>
<listitem>
<para><application>Pegasus</application> for win32 uses single files for Mail
folders similar to &kmail;. <application>Pegasus mail</application> folder files
have the extension <literal role="extension">.pmm</literal> but they are the same format as mbox except the messages
do not start with the <literal>From</literal> header, but with a control character. To work around
this, replace each instance of the control character with <literal>From
aaa@aaa Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 1997</literal>. This <literal>From</literal>
line should be the first line of every message, before the
<literal>Received:</literal> and other headers. Make sure to use a text editor
that lets you save the files in &UNIX; format or create new folders in
<application>Pegasus</application> that are in &UNIX; format and copy your messages
there.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>

<varlistentry>
<term>Maildir / Outlook Express / xfmail</term>
<listitem>
<para>Tools to convert these formats are available at the
<ulink url="http://kmail.kde.org/tools.html">Tools section of &kmail;'s
homepage</ulink>.</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>

<varlistentry>
<term>Lotus <application>Notes</application>, BeOS Mail files, <application>cc:
Mail</application>, &etc;...</term>
<listitem>
<para>First you should have a look at <ulink
url="http://kmail.kde.org/tools.html">Tools section of &kmail;'s homepage</ulink> if 
there are tools to convert your messages.</para>
<para>Mail programs not listed here or on the homepage probably do not work with &kmail; as they use
proprietary mail formats that &kmail; cannot understand. However, there is no
harm in trying! If the mailbox file looks similar to the mbox format, try
copying the mailbox file (remember, the index file is not needed) to your
<filename class="directory">~/Mail</filename> folder and see what happens if you start
&kmail;. If you get mailboxes from your favorite email client to work in &kmail;,
please tell us how you did it so that we can include directions in a future
revision of this documentation. </para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>

</variablelist>

</chapter>