Microsoft Outlook to Mozilla Thunderbird: My Migration Determination Remains Undeterred

Following up on my prior post, I’m now back on Mozilla Thunderbird as my email and RSS client as of a few hours ago, and with no data loss to boot. As I mentioned last time, I was able to restore normal Thunderbird functionality if I deleted the directory tree containing the Outlook message database I’d imported. Selective deletions of portions of that directory tree didn’t work, but on-a-hunch step-by-step additions beginning with a clean-slate start did:

• Add one folder tree
• Launch Thunderbird
• Exit Thunderbird
• Lather, rinse and repeat

At the moment, the bulk of my Outlook-sourced email folders (and subfolders) have been restored, and most of the remainder are don’t-cares:

• AVG Anti-Virus
• Possible Spam, and Spam (from my SpamBayes past), and
• Clippings, and RSS (from my NewsGator Inbox past)

The rest of the stuff is low-priority to preserve, and I may not bother attempting to restore it, especially given that I still have it in Outlook on the virtualized Windows XP image.

I suspect, from perusing the date and time stamps of the various MSF files, that Thunderbird for some reason locked up last night during its initial index of some of the messages I’d imported from Outlook, a situation from which it was unable to recover as long as the original folder structure was in place. Whatever I did today restored normal operation, and indexing seems to have continued from where it had left off. I may have inadvertently stumbled across a per-folder size or message count limitation with Thunderbird; I’ll try to contact Mozilla tomorrow, and I’ll report back anything relevant I find out.

Once the initial index is complete (later tonight, judging from progress so far), subsequent message-by-message indexing should be quite speedy, and I suspect Thunderbird will therefore as a result run even faster than it already does. I’ll periodically update you as I continue to ramp up the Thunderbird learning curve, including the installation of various extensions, themes and other customizations. Wish me luck that I don’t encounter another seemingly ‘fatal’ situation like the one I found myself facing last night!