[Alpine-info] Re: Import alpine mbox to MacMail fails

[Sascha Vieweg]

On 11-04-17 22:47, Eduardo Chappa wrote:


> On Sun, 17 Apr 2011, Sascha Vieweg wrote:

>

>>  I was playing around with mailutil downloaded to my mac using

>>  Macports. I created a mbx file within alpine (new folder

>>  without a special driver), then copied a handful of mails to

>>  it, quit alpine, copied the mbx file to the home directory,

>>  then run

>>

>>  mailutil copy source "#driver.unix"/destination

>>

>>  The command quit without warnings. However, MacMail did not

>>  import the resulting mbox file (if it was an mbox file).

>

> I tried the command without the quotes and it worked well for 

> me. It created a mailbox in the unix format. You might want to 

> turn "verbose" and see if that gives you any clue.

>

> For example, here is the output from the command line in Linux.

>

> $ mailutil -v copy mail/bug_405762.mbox #driver.unix/kkk

> /home/chappa/mail/bug_405762.mbox [23 message(s)] => #driver.unix/kkk

> [Ok 23 messages(s)]

>

> I hope this helps.


You are right, Eduardo, the conversion looks fine and so does the 
initial creation of a mailbox folder in alpine using driver 
"#driver.unix". In either case no warning comes up and everything 
works fine. I guess the problem is on MacMail's side. After 
playing around it figured out that the following works:

Convert your mbx file to mbox file using the command above 
provided by Eduardo. The mailutil command is provided within the 
imap-uw package, which can in turn be installed through MacPorts.

Name the target file "mbox". Navigate to a finder directory and 
create a new folder, name that folder "what_you_want.mbox". Copy 
the target file into this folder. In MacMail, click File, Import 
Mailboxes. In the upcoming dialogue leave the selection on "Apple 
Mail". Click continue and select *the folder that contains the 
.mbox folder that, in turn, contains the mbox file*. Done, and the 
mail is there.

Note that it's crucial, first, that the apline's file name is 
exactly "mbox", no extension, no other name. Second, that the 
folder created in Finder ends with ".mbox". Third, that you must 
select the folder that contains the mbox folder (and the mbox 
folder in turn contains the alpine file).

However, the forestanding implies that MacMail does not recognise 
*every* Unix mbox file, and I wasn't able to find out why.

Bests, *S*


-- 
Sascha Vieweg, saschaview at gmail.com