I was wondering if it was at all possible to take mail messages from an old vpopmail Maildir and put them into a new dovecot Maildir without editing settings in the new installation (as the new system is web managed now and I don't want it to fall out of sync!)
thanks!
Yes it is possible. And if you had looked at the documentation, you would have seen the guide: http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Migration/Courier