How to export IMAP mail into MH or Pine format
If you have been using IMAP mail on Athena (i.e. with Evolution,
Netscape, or pine), and need to move your mail somewhere else, you
will need to download it into your Athena account. Two common mail
formats are pine mail (one file per folder), and MH mail (one file per
message).
To save your messages from IMAP to either pine format or MH format,
launch athena pine.
Type 's' to enter the Setup screen, then 'c' to access the
Configuration options. Type a 'w' and then the word 'aggregate' and
then press return. This will move the cursor to the option called
"enable-aggregate-command-set". You need to enable this option in
order to copy folders, so type an 'x' if there is no X in the box
(like [ ]). Press 'e' to Exit Setup, and 'y' to save changes to your
configuration. Pine will return you to the main menu.
Press 'l' to see the folder list. The topmost "Folder-Collection <MIT
Mail>" is your IMAP account. "Folder-Collection <Old MH Mail>" is
your MH mail folder (~/Mail/) and "Folder-Collection <Old Pine Mail>"
is the folder for pine's native format (~/mail/). If you're importing
the mail to another UNIX system, pine format might be the safest
choice, but both formats are widely importable to many other mail
clients.
Move the cursor to the "[Select Here to See Expanded List]" for
whichever format to which you'd like to export the IMAP folders.
Press return and a list of folders will appear in its place.
For each IMAP folder you want to export (maybe only INBOX, but you may
have other folders of your own), make an equivalent folder by pressing
'a', entering the new folder's name, and pressing return.
When you've created all the destination folders you'll need, go into
each IMAP folder to be saved. Press ';' to select messages, then 'a'
to select all. Press 'a' and then 's' to Apply Save. You'll be asked
where you want to save the messages. Press ctrl-N until the desired
mail collection appears ("<Old MH Mail>" for Athena mail, "<Old Pine
Mail>" for pine mail) and then type the destination foldername, and
hit return.
***IMPORTANT: Pine's default when saving messages from one folder to
another is to delete the messages from their original folder. If
you don't want to delete the messages from your IMAP folder, press
'a' then 'u' to Apply Undelete before leaving each folder.
Repeat this step until you've copied all your folders. When you're
done, quit pine.
Your mail is now in ~/Mail/foldername/ if you used Athena format, or
in ~/mail/foldername if you used pine format. You can copy these
files from Athena normally.
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