Backing up Thunderbird mails on Company's server.

I use Ubuntu Linux on my office Laptop and download mails in Thunderbird. IT Department of every company dislike Linux users and find out ways to prevent them or complain to top management that they have this or that problem due to Linux user. Generally I am able to deal with such complaints.

I am working at Jharsuguda for over two and half years now and there are more than 10000 emails in my inbox and 1000 emails in the sent box. IT Department complained that it is not possible to back up my mails since they are doing back ups through Outlook Express in .pst format.

I installed Import/Export tools on Thunderbird and found that either I could export in .mbox format in one single file or individual mails in .eml format without attachments.

I proposed that Thunderbird on Windows could import the .mbox file but IT Department did not agree.

Then I found mbox2xml converter and told them that the IT Department could convert the mbox file into xml and read it directly in the browser but I had to do that conversion for them and convince that the mail was backed up in usable format.

Copying Thunderbird Mails and Address Book from Ubuntu 10.04 to 12.04

I am running Ubuntu 10.04 on my office Laptop since April 2010. When Ubuntu 12.04 came I considered distribution upgrade but decided not to do it since I was running latest versions of Libreofice, Thunderbird, Firefox using Launchpad PPAs. My only problem was to transfer the Mails and Address Book in Thunderbird. The other problem was to resize the big NTFS partition to install Ubuntu 12.04 on a new partition. I solved the NTFS resize problem as described on this post.

For copying Mails and Address Book I copied  xxxxxxxx.default folder and profiles.ini file from/to .thunderbird folder from Ubuntu 10.04 to 12.04 and it works perfectly.

Now I am using Ubuntu 12.04 on my office Laptop.