Claws Mail and copying emails from other computer

[Liviu Lalescu]

Dear all,

I have a backup work laptop. What is the best way to copy the sent emails from the laptop to my primary desktop? I know they are in Mail/Sent, but they might have the same names (I mean numbers: 1, 2, ...).

Claws Mail question.

[Željko Vrabec]

Hi Liviu!

The best way is to use IMAP. As I can remember Claws mail had an issue with gmail back then (don't know if they solved the problem). Do you use IMAP or pop3?

[Liviu Lalescu]

Hello, Zeljko,

I use POP3 on my server lalescu.ro. I am used to it now. But the problem is not in received emails, but in the sent emails. I was in another place with the laptop and I sent some emails, which were copied on the laptop in the Mail/Sent directory. I copied them to an external disk and then on my desktop in a temporary directory, but I would like to copy them in the Mail/Sent directory of my desktop and them to be added by Claws Mail in the list of sent emails. I am afraid of simply copying the files (1 file = 1 email), and also some file names might be the same.

[Željko Vrabec]

The best way would be to try. First make a backup copy of mail directory and then merge two mail directories (one from other machine with one on current machine). If something goes wrong you can always replace screwed up mail directory with a backup. As far as I can remember I did it long time ago with claws mail. Before you do anything make a backup of whole mail directory (not only Mail/Sent subdirectory).

Question for you: does your server support IMAP protocol?

If so, consider switching to it. It saves a lot of time and syncs all your machines by default. For instance, I sync my PC, my laptop and my phone that way. All my inboxes, sent folders and custom folders I created are always the same on all my devices.

[Liviu Lalescu]

Oh, thank you for the details! I will read about IMAP. I think it supports.

Also, I will do a backup and then merge.

[Liviu Lalescu]

Zeljko, I read about IMAP. It is great for sharing accounts, but I want my emails only on my computer, not on the server. The reason is speed (which might not be a problem), and also I have many and large emails, and I delete the attachments of the old ones. I want to not occupy too much space on the server.

[Liviu Lalescu]

At your advice (and my brother's) I switched to IMAP. It seems to work as I want. Thank you!

[Željko Vrabec]

No problem!

I used to use POP3 long time ago, and had the same problem. I'm glad you made it.