Exporting Direct to Thunderbird

To export directly into Thunderbird, first install Thunderbird on your system. Courex will then automatically determine the location of Thunderbird's "Local Folders" and offers that as the default export destination folder. It also checks "To Thunderbird" automatically. You may have to create at least one account in Thunderbird after you install it for Courex to recognize the installation.

Courex creates a folder named "Courex" under "Local Folders". Under "Courex" it creates folders with the same names and structure as your Courier folders. You cannot change this folder before you start but it's easy to rename the folder in Thunderbird if you want to and, of course, you can also move and copy folders in Thunderbird if you wish.

When exporting direct to Thunderbird, the Address.csv, Accounts.txt and Export.log files cannot be written to the same folder as the email messages because Thunderbird would try to interpret them as mail folders. Therefore, these will be written to your non-Thunderbird export folder. By default this is a "Courex" subfolder of the Courier BOX file folder, if this is automatically detected at startup. You can verify and change this by unchecking "To Thunderbird", changing the path that appears in the "Export Destination Folder" box, then re-checking the "To Thunderbird" option (the destination path will change according to whether "To Thunderbird" is checked or not, even if you have changed one or both of the folders).

This is a little complicated and confusing so, to repeat:

Secondary files will NOT be written to the same folder as the Thunderbird mailbox files. To see and change where they will be written, uncheck "To Thunderbird". The secondary files will be written to the "Courex" subfolder of whatever path then appears in the "Export Destination Folder" text box. Then recheck "To Thunderbird". This will restore the mailbox folder to the "Export Destination Folder" box.

After the export is complete, and you open Thunderbird, Thunderbird will build an index file for each of your Courex folders the first time you select them. Thunderbird will treat all messages as received messages.  You need to locate the appropriate folders under the Thunderbird "Sent" folder to have them treated as sent messages. Courex does not distinguish between sent and received messages as such, except by preserving your folder structure - all messages are exported equally. All messages will be initially marked as unread in Thunderbird. You can mark them "All Read" or "Mark Folder Read" by using the right-click pop-up menus.

Although Courex's address book is optimised for import into Thunderbird, it is not automatically imported as part of the "direct to Thunderbird" option - it must be manually imported from the Address.csv file. In Thunderbird, select "Tools", "Import", "Address Books", "Text file", "Comma Separated", then select the Address.csv file. In the import dialog box, ensure that the "First record contains field names" box is checked, then check that "Address Book fields" and "Record data to import" match (the Address.csv file of Courex is designed to match the address book fields of Thunderbird) then start the import.