[Users] POP3 to IMAP4?

[Andrej Kacian]

On Thu, 31 Mar 2016 21:12:16 +0200
Michael <codejodler at gmx.ch> wrote:

> I asked something similar some time ago but probably didn't express
> myself clear enough, so it gots not answered.
> 
>  * What happens if i copy all mails of a POP account over to a new
> IMAP account (which would be the same mail account on the providers
> side) ? I assume they get all uploaded ? 

Yes, you can upload all the messages, until you hit server-side
size quota, in case your provider has any.

>  * What happens then if i copy whole folders with subfolders ? Will
> the folder structure be preserved ?

Yes, at that point, you're working with (creating and populating) IMAP
folders, so I don't see a problem.

>  * What happens to mail threads of other accounts, which are sorted
> into such subfolders, if i copy them over to IMAP ?

Nothing, IMAP server has no notions of Claws Mail accounts. Any copied
messages will just be there, available for Claws Mail or any other IMAP
client to access them.

>  * How can i adjust my 100+ filters with least effort, to work for
> the new IMAP instead the old POP maildir ?

That might be simple or tricky, depending on what your filters look
like. But if all they do is taking messages coming in to INBOX and
sorting them to various folders, you'll probably only have to adjust
the destination folder ID.
(e.g. "#mh/Mail/mycustomfolder" to "#imap/MyIMAPaccount/mycustomfolder")

If you're moving to IMAP, you might want to switch to server-side
filtering eventually. That way, any IMAP client you use will see new
messages sorted into correct folders already.

> I've got several hundred folders here (with many thousand mails, from
> several different accounts) and i would be happy to not need doing
> experiments.

Best advice here is: take a backup (and test it), grab a small subset
of your big mail folder, and test the migration with that sample.

Good luck!

Regards,
-- 
Andrej