Hi,

I was a long-time kmail user back in the kde3 days, but switched to Thunderbird about five or six years ago. I'm now considering moving back, but want to check a couple of issues before rolling up my sleeves.

Most specifically, at present, I use an encrypted external hard drive for mail storage. I use three different machines for work, all kept up-to-date with the latest Kubuntu LTS release. The drive gets plugged in to whichever machine I'm working with. My IMAP server at work has a very limited space quota, so just storing things in the cloud is a non-runner.

At the moment, it's a simple matter of having a symlink of .thunderbird -> /media/externaldrive/.thunderbird on all three machines.

Can I get away with a similar move with kmail? (I'm happy having other PIM information similarly shared between the machines if that would be necessary to keep Akonadi happy, but it's less essential, as I tend to just use Google Calendar.)

A somewhat separate issue, but would this cause any problems with the initial import of mail and settings?

Thanks.

If it's a mbox / Maildir, storage, it's likely possible by creating a resource that points directly to the drive. You may also want to play with the account options to bring them "offline" when KMail is not open so that you won't have issues if the PIM system starts and you don't have the drive plugged in.

Hmmm. Thanks for the pointer there, I'm looking into it. I've added the main Thunderbird mail file as a read-only mbox resource on one machine for the moment, to see how kmail copes with it.

Will report back and mark solved if things look good.

It looks like creating an mbox resource that points straight at the thunderbird mail file works for the basics - all of the mail is there. It's a really simple and elegant way to get things done.

I might get scuppered by the details though. Is there a way that kmail can import or recognise thunderbird tags? At present I have several years of mail that is sorted purely by tags and virtual folders (saved searches). It would probably be crippling to loose that organisation completely.

Googling the issue makes things look bad - almost all pages mentioning importing mail go Kmail -> Thunderbird, suggesting there aren't many people going the other direction. It also looks like kmail can't actually search by tags, even if I managed to keep them, is that right?

I think I'd really like to switch, but it I'm beginning to suspect I'm a usage case that Kmail might not fit.

I'm not sure about Thunderbird tags. The biggest issue first is understanding how they are at a technical level, given that Akonadi supports tagging itself. I'm thinking that you're the first one with this case, and that's why there are so little information on the topic.