KMail to Mail (OS X)

May 11, 2006 on 3:01 pm | In Computing |

Since I am traveling a lot again, increasingly rely on webmail, and never got really happy with KMail, it’s time to switch. This means I am going to rely on webmail as my first priority and back up my mail on my Mac notebook.
Since I already tried to do the switch from Thunderbird to OS X Mail earlier and that didn’t work properly I was quite concerned about this step and googled quite a bit. However, from KMail in KDE 3.5.2 it is remarkably easy.

First, you start KMail and create a new folder for every folder you wish to export. Make sure in the dialog you select the new folder to be of the mbox format.

Once you have all your folders ready, copy your mails from the old folders into your brandnew mbox folders. After that you close KMail.

Now you browse to /your_homefolder/.kde/share/apps/kmail/mail and copy any file that carries the name of your new mboxfolders into a folder on your Mac.

When you are done, you fire up Mail in Mac OS X and click on File/Import Mailboxes. Choose Other at the bottom, hit the arrow to advance a couple times, and finally pick the folder where you stored your mbox files. Once you have selected it, Mail starts to import your mail and you can comfortably arrange everything.