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+<chapter id="importing">
+
+<chapterinfo>
+<authorgroup>
+<author>
+<firstname>Daniel</firstname>
+<surname>Naber</surname>
+<affiliation><address>
+<email>daniel.naber@t-online.de</email>
+</address></affiliation>
+</author>
+<author>
+<firstname>David</firstname>
+<surname>Rugge</surname>
+<affiliation><address>
+<email>davidrugge@mediaone.net</email>
+</address></affiliation>
+</author>
+<!-- TRANS:ROLES_OF_TRANSLATORS -->
+</authorgroup>
+<date>2002-10-03</date>
+<releaseinfo>1.5</releaseinfo>
+</chapterinfo>
+
+<title>Using other Mailbox Files with &kmail;</title>
+
+<para>&kmail; offers an import tool for the messages and address books of some
+other email clients. You can access it using <menuchoice><guimenu>Tools</guimenu>
+<guimenuitem>Import...</guimenuitem></menuchoice>. Please make sure that you
+compact your folders in the other email client, no matter if you are going to use
+the import utility or if you are going to copy files manually.
+You only need to read this chapter if this tool does not work for you.</para>
+
+<para>This section is for all of the users who need to move email messages
+from their previous email client over to &kmail;. &kmail; can store its
+messages using <quote>mbox</quote> or <quote>maildir</quote> formats, which
+are the most widely-used mailbox formats on &UNIX; systems. Mbox mailboxes
+store messages in one file, identifying where messages start and end with a
+<literal>From</literal> line (do not mix this up with the
+<literal>From:</literal> header that contains the message's sender);
+Maildir uses one file per message. For many &UNIX; email clients, all you
+must do is move your mailboxes to <filename
+class="directory">~/Mail</filename> (or make <filename
+class="symlink">Mail</filename> a symbolic link to the folder containing
+your mailboxes), make sure they are writable by your user, and launch
+&kmail;. The mailboxes should now show up correctly in &kmail;.</para>
+
+<para>Please have a look at the
+<ulink url="http://kmail.kde.org/tools.html">Tools section of &kmail;'s
+homepage</ulink> first, to see if there is a tool that imports your mailbox
+and maybe even address book.</para>
+
+<warning><para>Do not use a second email client that accesses the files in
+<filename class="directory">~/Mail</filename> while &kmail; is running or
+you might lose messages. This section only explains how to import mailboxes
+to &kmail; once; it is not useful to you if you're planning to use several
+email clients for your mailboxes in the future.</para></warning>
+
+<variablelist>
+
+<varlistentry>
+<term><application>Eudora Lite</application>/<application>Eudora
+Pro</application></term>
+<listitem>
+<para><application>Eudora</application> uses the mbox format in its mail
+files. To use them with &kmail;, make sure that your
+<application>Eudora</application> mailboxes have been compacted, then copy the
+<literal role="extension">.mbx</literal> files (&Windows;
+<application>Eudora</application>) or <application>Eudora</application> mailbox
+files (&Mac; <application>Eudora</application>) to your <filename
+class="directory">~/Mail</filename> folder. You do not need to copy the
+<filename>index</filename> files. Once you start &kmail;, the mailboxes should
+appear in the Folders pane and the messages should be accessible in the Headers
+pane.</para>
+<para>If messages do not appear in the Headers pane, your mailbox files may
+still contain &Windows; or &Mac; line-feed characters. Use your favorite
+text editor, the <application>recode</application> command or a scripting
+language to change the &Windows; or &Mac; line feeds to &UNIX; line
+feeds.</para>
+</listitem>
+</varlistentry>
+
+<varlistentry>
+<term><application>Mailsmith</application></term>
+<listitem>
+<para><application>Mailsmith</application> runs on &Mac; and uses its own database
+format; however it is possible to export mail into mbox format using
+<menuchoice><guimenu>File</guimenu><guimenuitem>Export
+Mail</guimenuitem></menuchoice> on a
+selected mailbox or on selected messages. Once the messages have been exported, translate
+the &Mac; line breaks to &UNIX; line breaks using your favorite editor, or using the following
+command under &Linux;:</para>
+
+<para><userinput><command>cat</command> <option>mail-mac.txt</option>
+| perl -e 'while (&lt;STDIN&gt;) { s/\r/\n/gi; print $_ ;}' &gt; mail-unix.txt</userinput></para>
+
+<para>&kmail; will only recognize mboxes placed directly in the <filename class="directory">~/Mail/</filename>
+folder. This means that a folder hierarchy cannot be preserved by simply moving files into the
+<filename class="directory">~/Mail/</filename> folder, but will need to be reconstructed
+within &kmail; manually.</para>
+
+</listitem>
+</varlistentry>
+
+<varlistentry>
+<term>MMDF</term>
+<listitem>
+<para>This format is close enough to the mailbox format that &kmail; should be
+able to use these mailboxes if you just copy them to your
+<filename class="directory">~/Mail</filename> folder; however, MMDF mailboxes
+have not been tested with &kmail;, so your results may vary. If you can get
+this format to work with &kmail;, please let us know so we can include more
+specific directions in the next documentation release.</para>
+</listitem>
+</varlistentry>
+
+<varlistentry>
+<term>MH mailboxes</term>
+<listitem>
+<para>MH mailboxes are directories containing files that correspond to each
+message in that mailbox. A shell script to convert MH mailboxes to mbox
+mailboxes, <command>mh2kmail</command>, is included at least in the source
+releases of &kmail;, but maybe not in the packaged releases. Running this script
+on a MH folder will convert it to an mbox file. We strongly suggest that you
+back up your MH mail folders before you use this script.</para>
+</listitem>
+</varlistentry>
+
+<varlistentry>
+<term>Forte <application>Agent</application></term>
+<listitem>
+<para>In <application>Agent</application>:</para>
+<procedure>
+<step>
+<para>Select the messages to export</para>
+</step>
+<step>
+<para>Select <menuchoice><guimenu>FILE</guimenu><guimenuitem>SAVE MESSAGES
+AS</guimenuitem></menuchoice></para>
+</step>
+<step>
+<para>Mark the <guilabel>UNIX FORMAT</guilabel> and <guilabel>SAVE
+RAW</guilabel> boxes</para>
+</step>
+<step>
+<para>Give File a <literal role="extension">.txt</literal> extension and
+save.</para>
+</step>
+</procedure>
+
+<para>In &kde;:</para>
+
+<procedure>
+<step>
+<para>Move the previously-saved file to the correct <filename
+class="directory">~/Mail</filename> folder</para>
+</step>
+<step>
+<para>Rename file without <literal role="extension">.txt</literal>
+extension</para>
+</step>
+</procedure>
+<para>When you open &kmail; the new folder with appropriate messages will be
+there.</para>
+</listitem>
+</varlistentry>
+
+<varlistentry>
+<term>&Netscape; Mail</term>
+<listitem>
+
+<para>If you are using &Netscape; 4.x, the mail files should be found
+in <filename class="directory">~/nsmail</filename>; if you are using
+&Netscape; 6.x, they're buried in a folder deep in the <filename
+class="directory">~/.mozilla</filename> subfolder, something like:
+<filename
+class="directory">/home/user_name/.mozilla/user_name/2ts1ixha.slt/Mail/Mail/server_name</filename>
+(the <filename class="directory">2ts1ixha.slt</filename> string will
+probably vary, so check it on your own system.) The <filename
+class="directory">[...]/Mail/Mail</filename> folder contains one
+subfolder for each account from which you receive mail through
+Netscape (&eg; <filename
+class="directory">[...]/Mail/Mail/math.university.edu</filename>);
+you will need to copy files from each of them if you want everything to
+be accessible under &kmail;.</para>
+
+<para>If you have no subfolders, just copy all of the &Netscape;
+files to <filename class="directory">~/Mail</filename>, make sure
+that they are writable (only by your user, of course), and restart
+&kmail;: all of the messages will now appear in &kmail; folders.
+(Note that if you use a command like <command>cp
+<parameter>*</parameter> <parameter>~/Mail</parameter></command>, you
+should follow it with <command>rm <option>-f</option>
+<parameter>~/Mail/*.msf</parameter></command>; every &Netscape; 6
+folder has a corresponding <filename>.msf</filename> file, and if you
+do not get rid of them you will have a bunch of spurious empty
+folders.)</para>
+
+<para>If you were using subfolders under &Netscape; (&eg; a main
+folder called <replaceable>Work</replaceable> with subfolders called
+<replaceable>Jim</replaceable> and <replaceable>Nancy</replaceable>),
+there are additional steps required. First, create the main folder
+(<replaceable>Work</replaceable>) in &kmail; and create a temporary
+child folder under it (by right-clicking on the folder name and
+selecting <guilabel>Create child folder</guilabel>); it does not
+matter what you call this folder -- <replaceable>dummy</replaceable>
+or the default <replaceable>unnamed</replaceable>, for example. Once
+a child folder has been requested, &kmail; creates a hidden folder
+in <filename class="directory">~/Mail</filename> called (in this
+example) <filename class="directory">.Work.directory</filename>. You
+can then copy your &Netscape; subfolder files
+(<replaceable>Jim</replaceable> and <replaceable>Nancy</replaceable>)
+into <filename class="directory">~/Mail/.Work.directory</filename>,
+and restart &kmail;; the child folders will appear under the main
+folder <replaceable>Work</replaceable>. Of course, this procedure may
+be extended for sub-subfolders, to any depth. (You can remove the
+temporary child folders afterwards, unless it amuses you to have a
+<replaceable>Work</replaceable> subfolder called
+<replaceable>dummy</replaceable>.)</para>
+
+</listitem>
+</varlistentry>
+
+<varlistentry>
+<term><application>Pegasus Mail</application></term>
+<listitem>
+<para><application>Pegasus</application> for win32 uses single files for Mail
+folders similar to &kmail;. <application>Pegasus mail</application> folder files
+have the extension <literal role="extension">.pmm</literal> but they are the same format as mbox except the messages
+do not start with the <literal>From</literal> header, but with a control character. To work around
+this, replace each instance of the control character with <literal>From
+aaa@aaa Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 1997</literal>. This <literal>From</literal>
+line should be the first line of every message, before the
+<literal>Received:</literal> and other headers. Make sure to use a text editor
+that lets you save the files in &UNIX; format or create new folders in
+<application>Pegasus</application> that are in &UNIX; format and copy your messages
+there.</para>
+</listitem>
+</varlistentry>
+
+<varlistentry>
+<term>Maildir / Outlook Express / xfmail</term>
+<listitem>
+<para>Tools to convert these formats are available at the
+<ulink url="http://kmail.kde.org/tools.html">Tools section of &kmail;'s
+homepage</ulink>.</para>
+</listitem>
+</varlistentry>
+
+<varlistentry>
+<term>Lotus <application>Notes</application>, BeOS Mail files, <application>cc:
+Mail</application>, &etc;...</term>
+<listitem>
+<para>First you should have a look at <ulink
+url="http://kmail.kde.org/tools.html">Tools section of &kmail;'s homepage</ulink> if
+there are tools to convert your messages.</para>
+<para>Mail programs not listed here or on the homepage probably do not work with &kmail; as they use
+proprietary mail formats that &kmail; cannot understand. However, there is no
+harm in trying! If the mailbox file looks similar to the mbox format, try
+copying the mailbox file (remember, the index file is not needed) to your
+<filename class="directory">~/Mail</filename> folder and see what happens if you start
+&kmail;. If you get mailboxes from your favorite email client to work in &kmail;,
+please tell us how you did it so that we can include directions in a future
+revision of this documentation. </para>
+</listitem>
+</varlistentry>
+
+</variablelist>
+
+</chapter>