sraedler / imap-upload

Python script for uploading a local mbox file to IMAP4 server.

IMAP Upload

Copyright © 2009-2014 OZAWA Masayuki and Ricardo Gladwell

IMAP Upload is a tool for uploading a local mbox file to IMAP4 server. The most stable way to migrate to Gmail.

Features

• Recursively import mbox sub-folders, currently supports Mac Mail MBOX export folder format.
• Read messages stored in mbox format which is used by many mail clients such as Thunderbird.
• Upload messages to IMAP4 server.
• Preserve the delivery time of the message. (support date time in From_ line / “Received:” field / “Date:” field)
• Automatic retry when the connection was aborted which happens frequently on Gmail.
• Can write out failed messages in mbox format. (Easy to retry for the failed messages)
• Supports IMAP servers that can only store either folders or emails in a folder
• Support SSL.
• Run on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, *BSD, and so on.
• Command line interface. (No friendly GUI, sorry...)
• Free of charge.
• Open source.

Requirements

• Python 2.5 or later.

Quick Start

Uploading a local mail box file “Friends.mbox” to the remote mail box “imported” on the server “example.com” using SSL:

python imap_upload.py Friends.mbox imaps://example.com/imported

You can specify the destination by options instead of URL:

python imap_upload.py --host example.com --port 993 --ssl --box imported Friends.mbox

You can use a shortcut option for the Gmail server:

python imap_upload.py --gmail --box imported Friends.mbox

You can use a shortcut option for the Office 365 server:

python imap_upload.py --office365 --box imported Friends.mbox

There's an --error option so that you can store the failed messages in mbox format and retry for them later:

python imap_upload.py --gmail --box imported --error Friends.err Friends.mbox

You can also recursively import mbox sub-folders using th -r option:

python imap_upload.py --gmail -r path

If your server only supports email or folders per folder you can use the --email-only-folders option together with -r. If a mixed content folder is found, the emails of the folder are uploaded to a sub-folder of the same name:

python imap_upload.py -r path --email-only-folders

Example:

**Local**
  Foo (Folder)
   -> Bar (Folder)
   -> Email 1
   -> Email 2

**Remote**
  Foo
    -> Bar (Folder)
    -> Foo (Folder)
      -> Email 1
      -> Email 2

You can use just output the account's mailboxes (folders/labels) list. This is useful if you need to upload to an existing special mailbox (i.e.: Gmail's Send Email label, when using a language different from English):

python imap_upload.py --gmail --list_boxes

If you prefer a tree-like view of the mailboxes:

python imap_upload.py --gmail --list_boxes --treeview

Some email providers use alternative IMAP folder separators (for example, Hetzner uses the . separator character). You can change this default using the --folder-separator argument, as follows:

python imap_upload.py -r path --folder-separator '.' --email-only-folders

For more details, please refer to the --help message:

python imap_upload.py --help