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<p dir="auto">On 3 Sep 2022, at 13:41, Bill Cole wrote:</p>
</div><div class="plaintext" style="white-space: normal;"><blockquote style="margin: 0 0 5px; padding-left: 5px; border-left: 2px solid #777777; color: #777777;"><p dir="auto">On 2022-09-02 at 21:23:37 UTC-0400 (Sat, 03 Sep 2022 11:23:37 +1000)
<br>
Gavan Schneider via mailmate <mailmate@lists.freron.com>
<br>
is rumored to have said:
<br>
[...]</p>
<blockquote style="margin: 0 0 5px; padding-left: 5px; border-left: 2px solid #777777; border-left-color: #999999; color: #999999;"><p dir="auto">Plan:
<br>
Put all my “eggs” in what appears to be the much better basket</p>
<p dir="auto">Proposed process, and your thoughts and wisdom welcome here —
<br>
1. Take IMAP accounts “off-line”in MlMt
<br>
2. Switch DNS of the relevant domain name to the good provider
<br>
4. Create the email accounts on this provider
<br>
5. Change the IMAP account settings in MlMt
<br>
6. Wait for the DNS change to propagate
<br>
7. Bring accounts “on-line” in MlMt… and
<br>
8. Allow the synchronisation process to happen, with lots of messages getting loaded on the ISP server (I hope)</p>
</blockquote><p dir="auto">That will not be what happens. Instead, MM will toss all the local messages. You will have pristine email accounts, unsullied by email.</p>
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<p dir="auto">Exactly correct</p>
</div><div class="plaintext" style="white-space: normal;"><blockquote style="margin: 0 0 5px; padding-left: 5px; border-left: 2px solid #777777; color: #777777;"><blockquote style="margin: 0 0 5px; padding-left: 5px; border-left: 2px solid #777777; border-left-color: #999999; color: #999999;"><p dir="auto">9. Clean-up in account maintenance mode on bad provider once I get access again (find any missing messages, etc.)</p>
<p dir="auto">I have the bandwidth to cover this and speed is good so it should all happen in reasonable time provided I am correct in my process.</p>
<p dir="auto">So, have I made any silly assumptions or omissions in the above?</p>
</blockquote><p dir="auto">Not silly, as it is understandable and not entirely unreasonable: that MM's local copy of your mail is anything more than a 100% cache of the server view of the message store. Whenever the server disagrees with MM about what messages exist and what their states are, the server wins unconditionally.</p>
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<p dir="auto">Thank you. This was the “go to” message I needed.</p>
</div><div class="plaintext" style="white-space: normal;"><blockquote style="margin: 0 0 5px; padding-left: 5px; border-left: 2px solid #777777; color: #777777;"><p dir="auto">The tool you want is imapsync: <a href="https://imapsync.lamiral.info" style="color: #777777;">https://imapsync.lamiral.info</a></p>
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<p dir="auto">Always interesting when I return to this tool. Have never used it. And I still cannot use it since I do not have access to the source IMAP account… my understanding is this is the place to go when moving from one provider to another.</p>
</div><div class="plaintext" style="white-space: normal;"><blockquote style="margin: 0 0 5px; padding-left: 5px; border-left: 2px solid #777777; color: #777777;"><p dir="auto">There's a MacPorts port that's relatively recent, and I suspect that Homebrew has a recipe for it. If you have command line access and can install your own tools, it runs on anything Unix-like and you may find it faster to run server-to-server rather than via your Mac.</p>
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<p dir="auto">Have been using Unix before it was *nix, and Homebrew keeps an entire subset of my file system updated :)</p>
</div><div class="plaintext" style="white-space: normal;"><blockquote style="margin: 0 0 5px; padding-left: 5px; border-left: 2px solid #777777; color: #777777;"><p dir="auto">Another MacOS tool that I like a lot for client-side message store wrangling is (not free) Emailchemy: <a href="https://weirdkid.com/emailchemy/" style="color: #777777;">https://weirdkid.com/emailchemy/</a>.</p>
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<p dir="auto">Will check once I have this migration sorted</p>
</div><div class="plaintext" style="white-space: normal;"><blockquote style="margin: 0 0 5px; padding-left: 5px; border-left: 2px solid #777777; color: #777777;"><p dir="auto">Alternatively, you COULD use MM to export your entire message store in a form that it can re-import. Then you would switch the settings, let MM wipe out its cache, and import the messages.</p>
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<p dir="auto">This is where I ended up…</p>
<p dir="auto">Revised process almost complete —</p>
<ol>
<li>Relevant accounts taken off line in MailMate</li>
<li>MailMate message folders for these accounts taken out of the “/Users/gavan/Library/Application\ Support/MailMate/Messages/IMAP” folder (cue lots of missing content messages :)</li>
<li>DNS settings switched to new provider (propagated in a few hours), and email addresses recreated there (note I am moving the domain so the old address is the same as new address)</li>
<li>Mailmate IMAP settings edited (this was minimal since the two providers are using the same IMAP/SMTP/Port settings)</li>
<li>Addresses then brought on line and synchronised (leaving only the welcome message from the new provider) — and, new messages start to arrive</li>
<li>Folders of messages then dropped onto the respective subfolders in each MailMate email account</li>
<li>Adjust quota limits on provider for those accounts where the uploaded messages exceed the default quota, click “Retry”in MailMate and continue synchronisation</li>
<li>Wait for spinning wheels to stop (took a while)</li>
</ol>
<p dir="auto">Still to do —<br>
9. Regain access to the original server to retrieve some additional email content and mail list settings not stored on my machine</p>
<p dir="auto">Thank you Scott, Bill, and Ben for your inputs… ideas for now and future, all much appreciated.</p>
<p dir="auto">Gavan Schneider<br>
——<br>
Gavan Schneider, Sodwalls, NSW, Australia<br>
Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.<br>
— H. L. Mencken, 1920</p>
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