[Users] Using mailmbox plugin to access Thunderbird mbox files ?

[Luc Pardon]

Has anybody been able to access Thunderbird's local message files
directly, using the mailmbox plugin or otherwise?

With the plugin installed, I tried File/Add mailbox, selected MBOX and
pointed it to the directory where Thunderbird keeps its "Local Folders"
stuff.

That did give me a new mailbox with subfolders etc., same structure as
under TB, but they were all shown as empty. Somehow it didn't see any
of the thousands of messages in there.

FWIW, this is CM 3.17.8 on Linux, and the TB files and folders are all
owned by the same user that runs CM.

And Thunderbird tells me (in its "Setting page" for "Local Folders")
that the "Message Store Type" is "File per folder (mbox)". 


I know that CM ships with a tool called "tbird2claws.py", but that
seems a one-way operation. It appears to change all kinds of things:
renaming directories, reading and writing files etc.

And indeed on the Claws Mail tools page [1], it is listed in the "Mailbox conversion" category.

I also know that I can do a "File/Import mbox file" from CM.

But conversion or import is not what I want.

Ideally, I'd like both CM and TB to use the same MBOX data, so I can
switch back and forth between the two programs.

I am still evaluating Claws Mail as a potential successor to TB, and I
don't want to burn my bridges before I'm ready to make the switch.


After having seen [2] that the MailMBOX plugin "handles mailboxes in
mbox format", I had hoped that it would do just that. It seems not.

What am I missing?


Thanks in advance,

Luc


[1] https://www.claws-mail.org/tools.php
[2] https://www.claws-mail.org/plugins.php