Exporting/Importing IMAP data

M

modem

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Apr 7, 2004
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Hello all,

This may be a bit deviated off the main path in that it's not a directadmin issue, but since everyone here seems to be professionals or experts email, I wanted to run the question past everyone.

Currently I have email for one of my domains being outsourced and hosted by Everyone.Net email hosting services. There services are pretty poor compared to the software that is available now. What I am thinking about doing is exporting the data from them and importing it into a new webmail client. I would preferablly like to keep this seperate from my DirectAdmin email and domains, and would probably purchase another email server product. I haven't decided yet.

Anyway Everyone.NET is refusing to export my data, but instead would give me access to their IMAP server so I could retreive the account data for all 232 users.

My question is, when exporting IMAP data what is the best way to retreive it, and then import it elsewhere so that the messages/addres books/attachments remain intact??

Bradley
 
I believe it's as simple as setting up a local imap client (most pop clients also do imap) and checking the option (wherever it may be) to syncrhonize your mail folders.

But I've never done it.

Jeff
 
I've never worked with IMAP either, but from what you said, is it correct for me to take it to mean that IMAP mail stays on the server and the IMAP client syncs up with it so that the folder/mail structure is the same on both? I.E. if I created a folder in the inbox on the IMAP client, then the IMAP server makes that change on the server side as well to reflect it?
 
I'll do some working with it. However my question is, when creating new email accounts inside of DirectAdmin it shows only "Create POP Account". Do I need to do something in order to create IMAP accounts... or can I simply access current accounts inside the server that are being used as POP3 via IMAP in Outlook?
 
You don't have to do anything.

When DA first came out, it only had POP. I asked them to add IMAP and they did (perhaps others asked as well).

Obviously they never changed the skin.

Jeff
 
DA just calls all "virtual" email accounts POP accounts. They'll work for IMAP or POP.

As to the original post... If you only have access to the server via IMAP, there's no easy way to move all those accounts. You'd need to manually create all the email accounts for all the domains in DA, and then use an email client that is configured for the old account (with password) and the new account and move the messages from one to the other. You'd have to do this 232 times.

I would probably cobble together a script that could talk imap to both servers and do this work for you, but you'd still need a list of all the accounts and passwords and you'd still need the accounts to exist on the machine you're moving to.

BTW, the imap protocol doesn't include anything about address books, so that would be a different process if you're actually storing address book data on the old server somewhere.
 
Thanks for the info. I started experimenting with IMAP the other day and while it looks great, the only issue I noticed with it is that you can not have sub-folders or sub-sub-folders with IMAP. It denies me access to do that on the client side.
 
This is probably a client issue... dovecot (and imap) supports subfolders of folders, etc. I just used a webmail client on a DA docecot box to create a folder called "sub" at the top level then created a folder called "sub2" within it and copied a message to it without any problems.
 
I'm not using Dovecot at the moment which is probably why. I tried with Outlook 2003, Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.7, SquirrelMail and the other webmail client. None of them would let me create sub-folders for IMAP.
 
If I recall correctly, UW is a bit different in that UW folders can either contain messages OR folders, but not both. I have no clue how a client would play with this or comply with those rules.
 
Unless Dovecot fully allows this while vmp-pop3 and the other imap server program i currently run doesn't.
 
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