Overview
This article explains how to copy emails between two email addresses using Thunderbird. You can use this process to copy emails from your old email provider to DreamHost or to copy emails from one DreamHost email address to another. This process involves the following steps:
- Adding your old email address to Thunderbird using the old email provider's server names.
- Adding your new email address to Thunderbird using DreamHost's email server names.
- Dragging and dropping folders and emails from the old account into the new DreamHost account.
See the Copying using other email applications section below for instructions on copying or importing emails using Mac Mail or Outlook.
This article uses the address user@dreamhostexample.com. Change this to the address you're migrating to DreamHost.
Copying using Thunderbird
The following describes how to copy your email using Thunderbird.
Step 1 — Add your old email address to Thunderbird using the old email provider's server names
Add your old address to Thunderbird using your previous email provider's connection info. If you don't have this information handy, contact your old email provider to ask for it.
View the Mozilla Thunderbird overview article for detailed instructions on adding email addresses to this client.
Step 2 — Add your new email address to Thunderbird using DreamHost's email server names
Add your new address to Thunderbird, using DreamHost's email server names this time. View the following article for a detailed explanation of DreamHost's email connection info:
At this point, you should have two email addresses (or the same email address twice) added to Thunderbird, each linked to a different mail server.
Step 3 — Drag and drop folders and files
Your accounts in Thunderbird should appear like this:
From here, copying emails and folders is very simple. Thunderbird lets you drag and drop files and folders between the two addresses like your computer's file manager.
Copying emails from your old Inbox to your DreamHost Inbox
- Select all emails in your old inbox and drag them to the new inbox. To select all the emails, click the first email, hold down the Shift key, and then click the last email. They should all be highlighted.
- Drag them from your old email inbox into your new DreamHost email inbox.
- Click your DreamHost email inbox. You should see all emails listed.
Copying folders between email addresses
Folders can be dragged from one email address to another, just like emails. However, Thunderbird will sometimes copy over the folders without also copying their contained emails. To ensure that all your data is copied over, DreamHost recommends that you drag over your folders first and then drag the emails within each folder.
Your emails are now copied to your new DreamHost email address.
Other email applications
View the following articles for instructions on importing emails using Mac Mail or Outlook:
Mac Mail
Outlook
