Importing Evolution Emails and Contacts to Thunderbird

Mozilla Thunderbird has replace an Evolution presence in Ubuntu (Since Ubuntu 11.04), there is nothing wrong with this replacement, this is only a policy of canonical to make a good movement for Ubuntu in the future (just like switching from Gnome Desktop to Unity).

Thunderbird 7.0.1 a default mail application in Ubuntu 11.10

Some people probably have feel comfortable using Thunderbird but some of them may have not, if you have plans to migrate from Evolution to Thunderbird without leaving any contacts and Emails that store in Evolution, you have found it. Here are solution to keep your Emails and contacts that stored in evolution being read by Thunderbird.

Importing Evolution Emails to Thunderbird
Both Thunderbird and Evolution use the same file format to store an email (it's called mbox), so there is possible way to make them collaborated. Here step to import Evolution emails to thunderbird.

• Open Nautilus.
• Go to folder: ~/.local/share/evolution/mail/local (this is Evolution folder that store users email).
• Copy all the file without extension (like as Inbox, Outbox,..) into the Thunderbird folder (in my computer it's store in ~/.thunderbird/43cge2q1.default/Mail/Local Folders, you need too change 43cge2q1.default into yours).
• Test it, Launch Thunderbird to check that all your mail have been correctly imported.

Besides of using a way above, you can also use Thunderbird Extension called MboxImport, MboxImport give an easy way to import and export emails using Mbox format.     

Importing Evolution Contacts to Thunderbird
To import Evolution contacts to thunderbird not so difficult like Importing Evolution Emails to Thunderbird above, here are step to import evolution contacts to thunderbird:

• Open your Evolution.
• Go to the contacts page, then to File > Save AS VCard for each contact. Other way, you can also select them all using Ctrl+A, then export the whole lot into one .vcf file.
• Open your Thunderbird, go to Tools > Import menu, in windows that appears select import an "Address Books" and select "vCard file ( *.vcf)" and browse *.vcf that have created above.

All done, your emails and contacts you should have been synchronized now.