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Asked: 2009-09-08 01:31:42 +0800 CST

How to upload an mbox file to an IMAP server

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I decided to play with Mutt, and after quitting discovered that it had moved all the mails from my IMAP server to a local mbox file. I would like to put those mails back in the IMAP server. Is there an easy way to do this?

There are a couple of things that I am worried about:

  • The mails are mostly in UTF-8 or ISO-2022-JP. I am worried a primitive tool that parses the mbox file will garble this up.
  • I have several folders under the main inbox folder in the IMAP server, which Mutt apparently did not see. I am worried that a tool that uploads the mbox file will smash the other folders.
upload imap mbox

2 Answers

  1. It is a two-step procedure:

    1. Import the mbox file into a local email folder
    2. Then move (or copy) the newly imported emails to the imap folder

    In my case I used Mozilla Thunderbird with the already mentioned ImportExprtTools addon. The latter supports importing mbox file into local folders. The former supports moving emails from one email-account to another, thus uploading locally stored emails to the inbox-folder of an imap account.

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  2. It turns out this is not quite as scary as I thought. I used the ImportExportTools (http://www.nic-nac-project.de/~kaosmos/mboximport-en.html) extension for Mozilla Thunderbird to open the mbox file. Then I selected all the messages, right-click and selected Move To and the desired IMAP folder. Seems to work fine.

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