[Users] Switching from Thunderbird to claws-mail.

[Rolf Turner]

I apologise if the questions I am about to ask are inappropriate for 
this list.  I am not (yet?) familiar with this list and its protocols.

Background:
===========

I am not (yet?) a claw-mail user.  I am seriously considering switching 
to claws-mail, but want to find out something about it before taking the 
plunge.

I am currently a Thunderbird user, and I am getting heartily sick of its 
slowness and various forms of recalcitrance.  I get and send a lot of 
email and have a huge number of folders into which I sort received 
emails for storage.   (These folders can have a fairly complex tree 
structure.)  I find that moving messages into these folders has 
(relatively recently) become fraught with peril.  I click on a message 
to drag and drop it, and very often the message seems to disappear into 
thin air and to end up in a location that I did not intend (or to 
completely evaporate).

Very often when I engage with thunderbird I get a wheel of death that 
spins interminably.  Very often when I click on "delete" nothing 
happens, and the message remains present --- until, for no apparent 
reason, Thunderbird decides that it will delete the message after all.

Message filters often seem not to take effect.  The filter log says that 
the message has been moved according to the filter specifications, but 
it hasn't.

There are other problems, but those are the main ones!!! :-)

Consequently I am seeking an email client that will perhaps *not* 
manifest such problems.

I run Ubuntu 18.04 with a Mate Desktop environment.

My email provider is my university (the University of Auckland) which 
runs an IMAP server.  So I don't want an email client that is tangled up 
in some way with e.g. Gmail or Microsoft Office.

I just want to send and receive emails (and sort and store them).  I do 
not want to "chat" or use "news" or "calendar", and I do not want 
interfaces with "social media".

Questions:
==========

1.  Will claws-mail allow me to get away from the flakiness I am 
currently experiencing with Thunderbird?

2.  Does claws-mail have message filters, at least somewhat analogous to 
those provided by Thunderbird?

3.  How easy (or difficult) will it be for me to import my elaborate 
tree of saved message folders from Thunderbird into claws-mail? 
Impossible?  Possible but gruellingly arduous?  Piece of cake (said he, 
optimistically)?  Please note that since I have an enormous number of 
saved emails to which I'd like to retain access, I would need to import 
them in a fairly automated manner, and not in a kludgy one-by-one manner.

4.  Are there any pitfalls or Traps for Young Players that I have not 
envisaged in the foregoing?

I hope that these questions make sense and are not inappropriate, and 
that one or more of you will be able to provide me with some useful answers.

Thanks.

cheers,

Rolf Turner

-- 
Honorary Research Fellow
Department of Statistics
University of Auckland
Phone: +64-9-373-7599 ext. 88276