[LINK] RFI: Thunderbird

[Roger Clarke]

At 17:44 +1100 10/10/18, Marghanita da Cruz wrote:
>What are you switching from?

Eudora.

There's a switch in philosophy from the 1988-2008 world and the present.

However, I've achieved conversion of a flotilla of mailboxes from my multi-GB archive across to two other (inadequate) clients, so the conversion problem (no. 3) isn't the major issue.

___________________

>I recently did an upgrade to a new version of thunderbird and stressed about nothing to import.
>
>It turns out it is just a matter of copying the files across (including address books) and Thunderbird read them.
>
>Ofcourse, I had backups etc. but the key directory for data files is gobledegook.default
>
>Marghanita
>
>
>On 10/10/18 17:17, Roger Clarke wrote:
>> Thanks for the feedback on my enquiry about an email-client!
>> (I received emails from multiple people, on and off list).
>>
>> As recommended, I've trialed Thunderbird.
>>
>> Remaining problems (2) and (3) below I might be able to live with.
>>
>> But problem (1) is serious, and I can't see how I could cope with it.
>>
>> Any assistance gratefully received!
>>
>> ________
>>
>> (1) Getting access to attachments (THE CURRENT PARTY-STOPPER)
>>
>>      Thunderbird is just as bad as Apple Mail, in that all attachments
>>      are buried in huge, deep-nested directories, still encoded.
>>
>>      Searches on a known filename don't find it, in either Spotlight or
>>      EasyFind. so it's impossible to locate received files!
>>      ('Someone sent you a file called squiggle.xyz.  Did you get it?')
>>
>>      No useful info turned up in the bare-bones documentation, nor from
>>      multiple searches in Thunderbird fora.
>>
>>      An add-on once existed, was broken, and has not been revived.
>>
>>
>>      It requires many wasted keystrokes to get a copy out,
>>      and that has to be done inside each and every message.
>>      (Find message, open list to see the filenames, double-click to
>>      get a pop-up, instruct it to save, select folder;  it's possible
>>      to set it to save future files of that filetype with a double-click)
>>
>>      (Even then it's behaviour is inconsistent.  For jpg, png, pdf, txt
>>      and zip, it displays the save-as setting in Preferences/Attachments.
>>      *But* for txt, doc, docx, odt and tiff, and perhaps others that I
>>      haven't tried, it doesn't show them, but does save them on request).
>>   
>>      Recovering the wasted storage-space requires much the same again.
>>      (Find message, open list to see the filenames, select Save/Delete
>>      at bottom-right, click OK).
>>
>>      Yesterday was a quiet-enough day, but 24 of the non-spam emails
>>      I received had attachments that I needed to access and evaluate,
>>      and 10 if them I need to be able to find easily by name or directory.
>>      That would be 40 clicks to move 10 files + 96 to delete 24 files -
>>      not counting the searching for messages.  Everyday, forever.
>>
>>      All it needs is:
>>      -   two nested options in the settings
>>          -   copy all incoming attachments to nominated attachments folder
>>              -   delete after copying
>>      -   a small routine, running on every attachment to every incoming
>>          email, that calls functions that are already in the package
>>
>> (2) Filtering incoming messages into themed mailboxes, and then
>>      Knowing which mailboxes contain newly-fetched mail (sort-of okay)
>>
>>      Thunderbird shows the names of mailboxes in bold if
>>      any message, fetched at any time in the past, has not been opened.
>>
>>      Thunderbird shows the names of mailboxes in bold *and blue* if
>>      one or more messages have arrived since the mailbox was last opened.
>>
>>      *But* a Quit and Restart of Thunderbird loses the vital blue marking
>>      (although not the far-less-useful bold marking).
>>
>>      Admittedly Tbird appears pretty stable and hence may not have to be
>>      frequently Quit and Restarted, as the execrable PostBox does.
>>
>> (3) Importing existing mailboxes (maybe fixable)
>>
>>      Thunderbird is worse than Apple Mail, in that Tools / Import fails
>>      to find Apple Mail mailboxes ('No mailboxes were found to import').
>>      Ah, deep down in the documentation it owns up to not importing
>>      from later than Apple Mail v5.  It's currently at v10!
>>
>>      There are no add-ons to support import.
>>
>>      No useful info turned up in the bare-bones documentation, nor from
>>      multiple searches in Thunderbird fora.
>>
>>      A link correspondent has used and reco's https://www.aid4mail.com/
>>
>> _________
>>
>
>-- 
>Marghanita da Cruz
>Telephone: 0414-869202
>Email:  marghanita at ramin.com.au
>Website: http://ramin.com.au
>
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-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/
			             
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
Tel: +61 2 6288 6916                        http://about.me/roger.clarke
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/ 

Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law            University of N.S.W.
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University