Thunderbird mail backup

[neddie]

I may be missing something obvious here, but I can't find an option in Thunderbird and can't see any addons which do this:

What I want is to create a simple backup text file containing my mails. I assumed there would be a generic "export" option and one of the file formats would be a simple text file. Then I can just save the simple text file and use things like grep without having to have a compatible mail program.

I know that the Inbox file itself is a text file, but it's got loads of other extraneous stuff in there like boatloads of message headers, plus more annoyingly the attachments as huge inline data blocks. I don't want those, I just want the sender, the timestamp and the message text. Of course I want to keep all this other information in Thunderbird too, I just want to export a subset of the information to a simple, flat text file.

 

Anyone know of an easy way to do this?

[ianw1974]

Maybe this helps:

 

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Importing_and_exporting_your_mail

 

Thunderbird is in mbox format, and so in theory you can pretty much use a utility that can read mbox format and export it using this. I know I had something similar like this when I moved from Thunderbird to Evolution. I did manage to do it, but can't remember what I found originally when I googled for it.

[Kieth]

Save it as a file. (File - Save as; or ctrl-s) Then when the window opens up to write the name and location, you'll see in the bottom right hand corner the option to save as .txt.

[neddie]

Thunderbird is in mbox format, and so in theory you can pretty much use a utility that can read mbox format and export it using this.

Yeah, I got that far, but all the utilities I found just exported to other mailbox formats rather than just plain text. I found Hypermail too but that is far more than I need, I'm sure there must be an easier way.

 

Save it as a file. (File - Save as; or ctrl-s) Then when the window opens up to write the name and location, you'll see in the bottom right hand corner the option to save as .txt.

I think that only works for single messages though? When I select more than one message I don't get a "save as -> file" option in the menu. And I definitely don't want to save all the messages one by one...

 

It's looking like I may have to roll up my sleeves and do some perl...

[Kieth]

I think that only works for single messages though?

Yeh, I think you're right. I save many letters, but I do it one at a time. It only takes me a moment. I do have a lot of letters in my mbox folders, though, which might be good to backup at times, too.

[Lexicon]

I he is carrying copies out whether he is archiving catalogues into, simple and fast MCC