Merging duplicated Opera Mail accounts

Short version:
I have a new computer so I imported my Opera Mail accounts from the old one, but there are now duplicate accounts that I need to merge.

Long version:
In 2010 I had a hard drive crash on my old computer and needed to reinstall Opera (among other things). I didn't realize it at the time, but this created two Opera Mail stores on that computer. Both mail accounts I use (at separate ISP's) were re-created. One version of each account contained the emails through 2009 and the other version of each account contained emails from 2010 to present. When I imported each account to the new computer, I imported the older emails first (that's what I found first), then went back and imported the newer ones. This means I have duplicated accounts (e.g., account1@Isp.net and account@isp.net (2); account2@isp.com and account2@isp.com (2)). I now have all my email history, which is good, but I have Opera checking each ISP twice and all emails are now duplicated in the main email window.

I would like to know if there is a way to merge these accounts. I would like to combine account1@Isp.net (2) into account@isp.net and account2@isp.com (2) into account2@isp.com.

I am using
Opera 11.51
Windows 7 64-bit
POP 3 for both
ISP email servers

Welcome to the My Opera community!

There's no easy way to merge the accounts, but there is a way.

* While Opera is closed, copy your mail folder to a safe place.

* Create a label named "not_on_server".

* Open the "Inbox" view under the access point for "account1".

* Select all messages in the list that are no longer on the server. Check with webmail for example to see which ones are still on the server. Then, drag the selection to the "not_on_server" label.

* Right-click on the "not_on_server" label and choose "export" to export to "not_on_server.mbs".

* Right-click on the "Sent" view under the access point for "account1" and export it to "sent.mbs".

* Create label "to_account1".

* Open the "Inbox" view under the access point for "account1 (2)".

* Select all messages in the list that are no longer on the server AND are no already in "account1" and drag them to "to_account1".

* Export the "to_account1" label to "to_account1.mbs".

* Create label "to_account1_sent".

* Open the "Sent" view under the access point for "account1 (2)".

* Select all messages that are not already in account1 and drag them to "to_account1_sent".

* Export "to_account1_sent" as "sent2.mbs".

* Goto "Menu -> settings -> import and export -> export Opera contacts" to abook.adr.

You now have everything exported.

* Close down Opera and delete the mail folder. And, delete contacts.adr in the preferences folder. (see opera:about for the locations)

* Start Opera back up and use the new account wizard to setup your POP account.

* One the account is setup, use "Menu -> settings -> import and export -> import mail -> import generic mbox" to import "not_on_server.mbs" into the POP account (not a new account) you already have set up. Close the import wizard wizard completely.

* Then import "to_account1.mbs" into the existing account.

* Then import "sent.mbs" into the existing account with "move to sent" set to "sent.mbs".

* Then import "sent2.mbs" into the existing account with "move to sent" set to "sent2".

* Then, go back to "import and export" and choose to import your opera contacts.

Once you're all done, you should have one account with no duplicates and everything will be fresh and non-corrupted.

If you have feeds, too though, export your feed list first and then import it afterwards. If you have newsgroups or IRC accounts, you'll have to set those back up too.

Also, see <http://operawiki.info/ImportFromBadMailFolder> for another way to do it.

You could also just export messages from "account1 (2)", import them into "account1" and then delete "account1 (2)".

Thanks, I'll give that a shot.

Originally posted by eggishorn:

I now have all my email history, which is good, but I have Opera checking each ISP twice and all emails are now duplicated in the main email window.

Couple things here.

1. If you just want to make the one account inactive and use it as an archive account:

* Go into the accounts properties and clear the "mail address" and servers settings.

* On the incoming tab in the account's properties, uncheck "check for new messages every" and uncheck "include this account when checking manually".

You can then just right-cilck in the mail panel and choose to "show messages from" just the account you want to work with at the time. If you goto "shift + f12 -> buttons -> mail", there's an account drop-down that you can add to the mail panel toolbar to make this easier. That will hide messages from the other account to avoid the duplicates.

And, since the account is now disabled, you can open the "Inbox" view under the access point for the account and delete and messages that are already in the other account.

2. You can click the view button above each message list, goto "show" and uncheck "show duplicates".

That actually sounds even simpler. I'll give that a try first. Thanks again.