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Thunderbird is your desktop client that can archive, compress, and store all emails offline. I've even used Thunderbird for migrating all my email history, fold

by akerro 6y ago

Thunderbird is your desktop client that can archive, compress, and store all emails offline. I've even used Thunderbird for migrating all my email history, folders etc. between servers: simply add new account and drag and drop folders between accounts. Simple enough to be used by non technical people who do not want to: >./imapgrab.py -d -v -f ~/user@email.com -s imap.mail.server -S -p 993 -u user@email.com -p password -m "_ALL_,-INBOX.Trash,-INBOX.Spam,-INBOX.Junk,-Trash,-Junk,-Spam"

bklaasen 6y ago
Be careful using Thunderbird to move mail between IMAP4 servers, on Linux at least - I've had it lose messages on me, deleting them from the source before they're successfully written to the destination. I was moving mail from a Gmail account to a Gandi account about a year ago, before the recent spurt of development activity on Thunderbird.
- akerro 6y ago
  >I've had it lose messages on me, deleting them from the source before they're successfully written to the destination. Copy folders then?
- miedpo 6y ago
  The trick here is to not close the program while the move is taking place (or so I've found). Also using copy over move is a bit better. Stupid bug though, I know :p.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  Am I the only one still using Evolution? I think its IMAP implementation is a lot better than Thunderbird's. I think this could be due to the fact that Evolution was initially written by people experienced in writing mail _servers_ but at this point I'm not sure how much of Evolution 1.0 code survives in 3.0.
- JonathonW 6y ago
  The only time I've ever lost mail was while trying to move a bunch of messages in Postbox (shares Thunderbird's backend). Wasn't even moving between servers-- this was just a folder-to-folder move. Always copy, verify that the messages really are at the destination, then delete. I don't know why this isn't what Thunderbird does on its own when you move mail, but it isn't.
arnoooooo 6y ago
We've had lots of problems trying to use Thunderbird to migrate to Google suite (mostly network / TLS errors when connecting to Gmail).
- artificialLimbs 6y ago
  Same. I ended up rate limiting my connection to 256kbps and it stayed stable.
  - tonyarkles 6y ago
    Last time I tried doing an IMAP backup using... hmmm, some command-line tool (imapsync maybe?), I discovered that Gmail has some kind of rate limiting baked in and starts throwing errors after that. This would, naturally (/s), cause the tool to restart the process. Limiting your connection speed probably caused the backup to go slow enough that you didn't hit the request limit.
    - jeffbee 6y ago
      Gmail has an abundance of rate limits and, in general, you cannot expect one account to sustain more than about 1 request per second. You might get more but 1 QPS is easy to remember. https://developers.google.com/gmail/api/v1/reference/quota https://developers.google.com/gmail/api/v1/reference/quota
bo1024 6y ago
You can just put that command in a cron job, though. Or (and I assume the above command is just a layer on top of this) just write a short getmail config file and set cron to run the simple command getmail once in a while.
pbhjpbhj 6y ago
Around two years ago Thunderbird crapped out on me and deleted all my archives. I've also lost emails when moving large (O(10^3)) IMAP folders. Not sure how much work has been done on Thunderbird but I do an IMAP backup before archiving or making structural changes. I should probably have an automated download for backup purposes set up ...
nix23 6y ago
I have really bad memory's about a Thunderbird migration, tried to move mails from ~exchange2003-time, but they where on a modern dovecot server, after i moved them everything was completely scrambled, tried with sylpheed and everything was perfect it even was much faster.
DrTung 6y ago
I've used the ImportExportTools NG Thunderbird addon to do the migration. I.e. right-click on all folders I want to download, start a new Thunderbird for the new mail provider, right-click on the new, empty folders and upload to them.
josefresco 6y ago
I also use Thunderbird Portable to backup my G Suite. Great tool, been using for years without issue. I open once a week and just let it sync.
znpy 6y ago
I always had horrible experience with thunderbird and any amount > 500 emails. Thunderbird would start do it's things (moving emails for example) then freeze for a while and then all of a sudden stop in the middle of the operation complaining that it's a lot of work and asking me if I want to continue. It's enraging every time. More so if you consider that IMAP is not transactional afaik.
- pstrateman 6y ago
  Unfortunately IMAP is basically entire ephemeral. The message IDs are mostly permanent, but the rfc says they can change so clients have to test them as per connection. This means every time you check your mail with an IMAP client it's syncing some of the headers for every message.

by akerro 6y ago

bklaasen 6y ago

Be careful using Thunderbird to move mail between IMAP4 servers, on Linux at least - I've had it lose messages on me, deleting them from the source before they're successfully written to the destination. I was moving mail from a Gmail account to a Gandi account about a year ago, before the recent spurt of development activity on Thunderbird.

akerro 6y ago
>I've had it lose messages on me, deleting them from the source before they're successfully written to the destination. Copy folders then?
miedpo 6y ago
The trick here is to not close the program while the move is taking place (or so I've found). Also using copy over move is a bit better. Stupid bug though, I know :p.
jeffbee 6y ago
Am I the only one still using Evolution? I think its IMAP implementation is a lot better than Thunderbird's. I think this could be due to the fact that Evolution was initially written by people experienced in writing mail _servers_ but at this point I'm not sure how much of Evolution 1.0 code survives in 3.0.
JonathonW 6y ago
The only time I've ever lost mail was while trying to move a bunch of messages in Postbox (shares Thunderbird's backend). Wasn't even moving between servers-- this was just a folder-to-folder move. Always copy, verify that the messages really are at the destination, then delete. I don't know why this isn't what Thunderbird does on its own when you move mail, but it isn't.

arnoooooo 6y ago

We've had lots of problems trying to use Thunderbird to migrate to Google suite (mostly network / TLS errors when connecting to Gmail).

artificialLimbs 6y ago
Same. I ended up rate limiting my connection to 256kbps and it stayed stable.
- tonyarkles 6y ago
  Last time I tried doing an IMAP backup using... hmmm, some command-line tool (imapsync maybe?), I discovered that Gmail has some kind of rate limiting baked in and starts throwing errors after that. This would, naturally (/s), cause the tool to restart the process. Limiting your connection speed probably caused the backup to go slow enough that you didn't hit the request limit.
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    Gmail has an abundance of rate limits and, in general, you cannot expect one account to sustain more than about 1 request per second. You might get more but 1 QPS is easy to remember. https://developers.google.com/gmail/api/v1/reference/quota https://developers.google.com/gmail/api/v1/reference/quota

bo1024 6y ago

You can just put that command in a cron job, though. Or (and I assume the above command is just a layer on top of this) just write a short getmail config file and set cron to run the simple command getmail once in a while.

pbhjpbhj 6y ago

Around two years ago Thunderbird crapped out on me and deleted all my archives. I've also lost emails when moving large (O(10^3)) IMAP folders. Not sure how much work has been done on Thunderbird but I do an IMAP backup before archiving or making structural changes. I should probably have an automated download for backup purposes set up ...

nix23 6y ago

I have really bad memory's about a Thunderbird migration, tried to move mails from ~exchange2003-time, but they where on a modern dovecot server, after i moved them everything was completely scrambled, tried with sylpheed and everything was perfect it even was much faster.

DrTung 6y ago

I've used the ImportExportTools NG Thunderbird addon to do the migration. I.e. right-click on all folders I want to download, start a new Thunderbird for the new mail provider, right-click on the new, empty folders and upload to them.

josefresco 6y ago

I also use Thunderbird Portable to backup my G Suite. Great tool, been using for years without issue. I open once a week and just let it sync.

znpy 6y ago

I always had horrible experience with thunderbird and any amount > 500 emails. Thunderbird would start do it's things (moving emails for example) then freeze for a while and then all of a sudden stop in the middle of the operation complaining that it's a lot of work and asking me if I want to continue. It's enraging every time. More so if you consider that IMAP is not transactional afaik.

pstrateman 6y ago
Unfortunately IMAP is basically entire ephemeral. The message IDs are mostly permanent, but the rfc says they can change so clients have to test them as per connection. This means every time you check your mail with an IMAP client it's syncing some of the headers for every message.