Daniel Hoelker Reporter
	Description • 22 years ago

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.2a) Gecko/20020910
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.2a) Gecko/20020910

While you give ways to import mail from other email programs, there is no way to
copy mail from a previous installation of Mozilla.  I upgraded from Netscape
4.77 to Mozilla 1.0 (Windows 98SE) and all of my email was imported just fine. 
I moved to 1.1.  I then wiped my drive and installed Windows XP.  I re-installed
Mozilla, created new profiles, and then tried to copy my email and other
preferences.  I first tried to copy everything, and my web preferences were
there, all of my email settings were there, but I could not see existing email
or even try to get mail (I never got the password popup).  Your FAQ says I
should be able to create a new profile, and then just copy over my inbox files
(and although it mentions both inbox and inbox.msf it then  says to "copy the
inbox file").  I deleted my profiles, re-created them, and tried a more
selective copy.  Still no email and cannot get email.  I realized you have a
randomly generated directory name that is probably in some file.  I found that
in prefs.js, changed the old directory name to the new one, and tried again. 
Still no existing email and cannot get new email.  I deleted my profiles,
re-created them, and tried to copy inbox and inbox.msf.  Again, when getting
into email I could not see existing email or try to get new email.  I deleted my
profiles, re-created them, and tried to just  copy inbox.  At that point when I
got into mail I just got an hourglass icon.  What would be really nice is if you
either gave an option to go get old settings, or allowed me to import from
Mozilla (how hard can that be - I would think it would be a lot more difficult
to import from other programs?).


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install Mozilla and use
2. Wipe drive and install new OS
3. Re-install Mozilla - all existing email/settings are gone forever.....

Actual Results:  
See description

Expected Results:  
Mozilla should allow a way to import settings and email from a previous
installation.

	Cavin Song Assignee
	Comment 1 • 22 years ago

First of all, can you try to create a new profile and then log into your email 
account without copying stuff from the previous installation? You should be able 
to read your mail this way. Just want to make sure you can at least read mail 
fine with new installtion.

Are you running POP or IMAP? Sounds like you're running POP and the folders you 
want to import are those stored locally, right?  If so then you can copy folders 
like INBOX and the ones you created yourself from the following mozilla 1.0 dir:

 ...\Mozilla\Profiles\<profile-name>\xxx.slt\Mail\<server-name>

to the similar dir created by mozilla 1.1:

 ...\Mozilla\Profiles\<profile-name1>\yyy.slt\Mail\<server-name1>

You don't need to copy the .msf files as they will be automatically created.

For folders that were created under "Local Folders" account in mozilla 1.0 you 
can follow the same above instruction except they are stored in "Local Folders" 
dir instead of  <server-name> dir.

If you are running IMAP then you don't have to worry about the folders on the 
server and all you need to do is copy folders in "Local Folders" over to the new 
"Local Folders" dir.

	Brian Angeletti
	Comment 2 • 21 years ago

Hmm it seems this has been posted for two years now and is still as valid as before.

This bug is still an issue because it is still tedious to explain to someone how
to import mail from a previous install.  Could you explaining how to copy
"...\Mozilla\Profiles\<profile-name>\xxx.slt\Mail\<server-name>" to
...\Mozilla\Profiles\<new-profile-name>\yyy.slt\Mail\<server-name>" to Aunt
Tillie who can hardly tell a mouse from the keyboard?

In fact, we are using the same data format between Mozilla installs (versions),
shouldn't it theoretically be much simpler to import our *own* mail format? 
This issue is truly important since their is no simple way to recover the mail
if your system is fried and you need to reinstall your Operating System.

We could also include a way export messages to an <external mail storage> file
as well but that's a comment for another bug...

	OstGote!
	Comment 3 • 20 years ago

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 63389 ***