Migrating email, news and feeds from one Opera installation to another
Tuesday, 28. December 2004, 22:41:44
If you are in the habit of installing the various previews and test releases that Opera comes up with periodically; or simply like to do a fresh, clean install of Opera when you upgrade to the next public release; one of the concerns is how to migrate your messages (email, news and newsfeeds). Following is a simple procedure that describes what to do.
Note that this description only applies when your new Opera installation is pristine (i.e. you have no email, news or newsfeed messages set up in the new Opera install).
Also note that the mail storage format is different in Opera 9 compared to Opera 8.xx. If you need to migrate an Opera 9 mail setup back to Opera 8.xx, this method will not work. In that case, you must export your Sent and Received messages in Opera 9 and import them back into Opera 8.xx.
If you already have some mail in the new Opera installation, your best recourse is to export the messages from your old Opera installation and import them into the new Opera installation.
You can import and export newsfeeds quite easily using the File > Import and Export... menu. For mail / news messages, see below.
Do the following in your old Opera installation:
You can now import these files into the new Opera installation using File > Import and Export >> Import mail >> Import generic mbox file. Remember to import the messages to the appropriate accounts, and to 'Move to Sent' the sent message files.
Note that this description only applies when your new Opera installation is pristine (i.e. you have no email, news or newsfeed messages set up in the new Opera install).
Also note that the mail storage format is different in Opera 9 compared to Opera 8.xx. If you need to migrate an Opera 9 mail setup back to Opera 8.xx, this method will not work. In that case, you must export your Sent and Received messages in Opera 9 and import them back into Opera 8.xx.
- In your old Opera installation, look at Help > About Opera and note the path to your 'Mail directory'
- Do the same for your new Opera installation (if 'Mail directory' is not found in Help > About Opera, note the location of the 'Opera directory' -- this is your Opera profile folder)
- Close all instances of Opera
- Rename the Mail directory for the new Opera
- Copy the old Mail directory in its place (if the new Opera did not have a Mail directory, copy the old Mail directory and place it next to the profile folder)
- Start the new Opera
If you already have some mail in the new Opera installation, your best recourse is to export the messages from your old Opera installation and import them into the new Opera installation.
You can import and export newsfeeds quite easily using the File > Import and Export... menu. For mail / news messages, see below.
Do the following in your old Opera installation:
- Right-click in the Mail panel, and set 'Show messages from' to one account
- Open the Received filter message list
- In the mail toolbar, enable all the View > Show > Show *** settings
- In the Mail panel, right-click on Received and select Export...
- In the resulting dialog, select an appropriate directory and filename for the exported message (e.g. AccountName_Received.mbs in the Desktop directory, where AccountName is the name of the account) and export the messages
- Repeat steps 2-5, replacing Received with Sent
- Repeat steps 1-6 for all accounts
You can now import these files into the new Opera installation using File > Import and Export >> Import mail >> Import generic mbox file. Remember to import the messages to the appropriate accounts, and to 'Move to Sent' the sent message files.
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