Hello Lennart, Thanks for your message. My comments are inline below. Steve ----- Original Message ----- From: "Lennart Sorensen" <lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> To: "Steve Petrie, P.Eng." <apetrie@aspetrie.net>; "GTALUG Talk" <talk@gtalug.org> Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2016 3:36 PM Subject: Re: [GTALUG] Advice -- Building Debian 8 PC To Replace Win XP PC;
On Thu, Jul 28, 2016 at 01:49:29PM -0400, Steve Petrie, P.Eng. via talk wrote:
The first big porting task will be to convert my Outlook Express mail folders (2.38 GB) to Thunderbird on Linux. And then start using the Linux PC for my email.
Why am I thinking:
Setup an IMAP server, point outlook at it, copy mail folders there, then connect other mail program at it and copy again.
Interesting idea. I would not want the complexity of setting up an IMAP server myself, but could use my existing email hosting service to provide the IMAP server. I use POP3 for my email hosting. Just fetch the mail to the Outlook Express folder on the Win XP PC, and then delete the mail from the POP3 server. Less exposure to "sniffing" by whoever. And there's absolutely no way I'm going to depend on any hosting service, to backup my precious 2.38 GB of emails.
I am sure there is a good reason not to do it that way though. I would be surprised if thunderbird can't import from outlook express files directly.
The reason for me not to do it [bulk transfer email via IMAP & Internet], is the slow bandwidth of my dial-up Internet connection. I know, I know, I should abandon dial-up for a faster connection. And I plan to. But not until the new Linux PC is fully operational, preferably using dial-up. I will need to connect the existing Windows XP PC and the new Linux PC via direct Ethernet cable anyway, to transfer the Win XP HDD contents over to the new Linux PC. This will be the fastest way to bulk transfer the mail. Maybe thunderbird can import from Outlook Express files. And that would be great.
Of course I keep my mail on the server anyhow, so it is already imap, and I don't have local folders to move around, so I haven't done that.
-- Len Sorensen