Mozilla Thunderbird

Hello everyone. I wanted to make this post here instead of a forum because I think it shows a very amazing application of wine.

Recently I found the need to transfer a large amount of email, originally saved in Microsoft Outlook's PST format, to Thunderbird on a Fedora box.

Googling for answers proved fruitless: the obvious solution is to use a Windows machine with Outlook and Thunderbird installed, import the email into Thunderbird, and move the contents of Thunderbird's Mail/ directory to the Fedora box or partition with a USB stick. However, all I had were .pst files from Outlook and Fedora.

Here's the solution:

1.) As root,

yum install wine

2.) Download and install the *Windows* version of Thunderbird with wine. (As a user, not root.)

3.) Download the Thunderbird PST Import plugin from

linux.softpedia.com/get/Communications/Email/Thunderbird-PST-Import-plugin-33014.shtml

and install this in the Windows version of Thunderbird. (Install the plugin using the tool in Tools->Extensions. Additionally, installing the plugin in the native Thunderbird directly would not work because it uses a Windows EXE, read_pst.exe, to do the conversion.)

4.) In the Windows version of Thunderbird,

click Tools->Import,
select the "mail" option,
select the "Outlook PST" option,
and navigate to the location of your Outlook PST files

The message that appears is written in French and says, roughly, "This is a big PST file and will take a lot of time." It does take a lot of time and may even appear to stall, but just let it run. Eventually a new window will appear and ask to choose which folders to import, click "OK," and then "Finish."

5.) After step 4, you should see all of the emails in the Inbox. Copy the contents of

~/.wine/drive_c/windows/profiles/jaybilly/Application\ Data/Thunderbird/XXXXXXXX.default/Mail/Local\ Folders/

to

.thunderbird/YYYYYYYY.default/Mail/Local\ Folders/

making filename adjustments where necessary. (See for reference, www.mozilla.org/support/thunderbird/faq#import)


In this case, wine saved someone six years of email and a trip back to Windows.