importing emails pop or imap again

[#1]

With the help of several posts on the forum I managed to import emails from Plusnet to a newly opened Gmail account.  However as others pointed out, only the Inbox gets imported not the 12 or so folders we have. There was talk that Outlook would allow folders to be transferred but I don't have office 365.

Can anyone suggest somewhere I can shift the Plusnet emails with it's folders? Even a paid solution!!  I do not want to lose my emails when I close the account.

Thanks 

G

[#2]

@Grend It's a long time since I played with my email set-up, but a simple question first - what client are you currently using?

[#3]

Actually it's not for me (I use The Bat / POP3) it is one of our guys here. They use iCloud  but that has little spare space hence we set up a Gmail account.  The plan is just to have somewhere to park the emails so they are not lost.

[#4]

Ah, so this is iDevice space question. How much space does he have on his machine? I've not looked into mine, as I store very little on my Apple devices - anything on there that I want to keep, I forward to my laptop and use the export function on Thunderbird to save really important mail I wish to my externals.

[#5]

I prefer to keep well away from iDevices as I know nothing about them. Just lookng to use a PC to set up somewhere to store the emails......  May be even software to  store them on a memory stick?

[#6]

Understand - I've been using them for many years - but not as my main email devices. Does your colleague have his Plusnet email on there? If so, I understand the protocol used on iDevices is IMAP, so the mail is actually stored on the Apple servers - not on the device.

I could be wrong here - as I said, I have a setup I've been using for longer than I care to remember, so maybe I'll pass this to the email guru - @Townman ?

[#7]

My understanding is the emails are all on the Plusnet server. I was able to access them from a PC to do the Gmail testing last night.

[#8]

If they are on a PN email address, sorry, yes they will be, but as I said, although I've been around here a long time and got my system working the way I want it, how I got there is lost in the mists of time, so I suggest you wait for @Townman , or maybe @MisterW , both of whom have a greater understanding than me.

[#9]

If you just want a copy of the emails stored locally, then I'd suggest installing Thunderbird and configuring it to access the Plusnet email via IMAP. Then use the Local Folders facility http://kb.mozillazine.org/Local_Folders . Create a suitable folder structure under Local folders and then copy emails from the Plusnet email account to Local Folders using select/copy and paste

If you wish , then you could also create a backup of Local Folders to save somewhere else https://www.cubexsoft.com/blog/how-to-backup-thunderbird-local-folders/

You could use the Thunderbird Archive functionality if you prefer https://conetix.com.au/support/archiving-emails-in-thunderbird/. This will automatically create a similar folder structure to the original email account. The only thing to note is that Archive 'moves' email to the local Archive folder rather than take a copy.

[#10]

Thanks for that, I like the idea of the auto saving of the folders and as the account will soon be closed, moving the emails is not an issue. I've just got to get my head around how to set it up!

Will port number and server name be the same as I used for the POP3 copy to Gmail? The complication I had was that this is a secondary account and needed <account name>+<user>.net for the Gmail import.

[#11]

The key issue here is the expectation to look at other folders … using a POP3 client. POP3 only accesses the inbox folder - not other folders a user might have moved email to using an IMAP client … and most certainly not the sent folder.

POP3 comes from the very earliest of email clients and it ought to be consigned to the IT waste bin. Using POP3 for most people will cause utter confusion.

@MisterW has pointed to the right solution - use IMAP.

[#12]

Ok.. making progress here. I have put Thunderbird on the PC. Signed into Plusnet IMAP account and can see the folders. I added a local folder called Archive. Inside that added a couple of others using the same name as the folders on the PN account. I copied a couple of folders - only Ctl and drag seemed to work.

I dug down the C drive and found the location of the archived file and can see 2 files for each of my orignal folder. One with no extension showing and one .MSF.- which I gather are the headers.

Am I correct in thinking I will always need to access these files with Thunderbird? I was hoping they might be plain text! No real problem. At lease I think with your help we have a way to grab the  PN emails before they get nuked! 

Thanks

[#13]

Having blown away tbird (and OS) installs in the past and have had to rely on sub-optimal backups, I must say that I find tbird a little irritating when it comes to folders that are not associated with configured e-mail accounts.

I've recently experienced a dose of 1970 'stuff' suddenly appearing in tbird. Just lots of listed entries without any other associated data. Minor irritation. It generally screwed up folder repairs and/or filters. Probably down to sub-optimal backups There may be some problems with if restoring backups from previous versions of tbird.

If tbird developers happen to be listening/looking - there must be an easier to re-map old 'local folders', and possibly even have the capability to have more than one 'local folders'.

Outlook (with all its faults) had that a decade ago.

[#14]

If using POP3 then there should be no other content in folders which may have been associated with the account.

Folders such as 'sent' (and the rest) will be local to the client app.

[#15]

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@greygit1 wrote:

If tbird developers happen to be listening/looking - there must be an easier to re-map old 'local folders', and possibly even have the capability to have more than one 'local folders'.

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I strongly doubt the TB developers visit Plusnet forums, 😂