Thunderbird import gone horribly wrong
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I hate posting on forums, but I can't find a support chat or email, so here goes.
I tried importing my thunderbird account into the Vivaldi browser, and it just filled with errors (I restarted the browser to try to make it act right, and the errors were gone from the list), none of the accounts work, and I have no idea what it imported, but it absolutely wasn't my current Thunderebird profile. I can't put in my credentials for my gmail accounts, I can't get anything at all to work, and the messages and folders are a mess. How can I wipe it all out and start over, and how can I figure out what went wrong? I have about 7 accounts feeding into my Thunderbird and a lot of folders and filters for sorting. I'm overwhelmed and have no clue what to do. I'd appreciate any help. -
@BrianaDragon welcome to the forum, and very sorry to hear that your experience with Thunderbird import is so bad. It's been a while (2 years, when Vivaldi Mail was very much more buggy than now) since I have tested Thunderbird import, and I encountered some issues but all of those were minor compared to what you report. I can't give you specific hints for another run at importing mails until I've repeated my own test run. Maybe someone else has good advice until I have done some testing.
Until then, to go back to the start go to settings - mail and remove whatever mail accounts have been created by clicking the minus button under the account list. It's safe to confirm that local messages are deleted, Vivaldi didn't touch the Thunderbird file structure and after import, accounts should be set to be offline (not in sync with the server)
If your accounts are IMAP, the best way to set up mail accounts is NOT import, but a normal account setup (using the plus sign under the account list in settings - mail). This makes sure that all data is in sync with the server, and it's easy to run different mail clients in parallel.
When it comes to email folders (my favorite topic, see my signature), please note that Vivaldi does NOT support local folders - only IMAP folders, and no hierarchical folder structure is supported.
Apparently you like to have mails sorted in folders, so Vivaldi may not be the email client of choice for you. Before hauling everything over in a possibly frustrating manner, set up one of your accounts (like the Gmail one) and see if you actually prefer Vivaldi.The more specific you describe issues, the better we can help solving them.
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@WildEnte said in Thunderbird import gone horribly wrong:
Vivaldi does NOT support local folders - only IMAP folders
I don't understand what the difference is, but it does sound like that's an issue. Why wouldn't it have such a common feature? I don't even understand the difference between IMAP and POP3. I just assumed that modern software would have such a feature. I guess it must have tried to cram everything into the Inbox. I only got 30 of over 2000 emails, and only from the first account in my list, not from the rest. I don't see the accounts marked as off or on line, just that logging in to the one at the top of the list failed.
One of the top reasons I got Vivaldi, beyond privacy) was the all-in-one features.I'm looking now, and I did get 4 custom folders from two POP accounts. How do those work? How did I get them? I could narrow things down in Thunderbird if I have at least some folders and filters to work with.
I will say that while Vivaldi is cool, it feels like Gimp vs Photoshop on the learning curve. I was instantly overwhelmed by all the options and how complex it is to understand without any in-line tips. I want to stick with it, I just need to figure out how it all works.
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@BrianaDragon said in Thunderbird import gone horribly wrong:
Why wouldn't it have such a common feature?
Not a bug, it is not implemented at this time.
If you think such feature is useful, please read Request New Feature, open forum Feature Requests for Mail and post request.
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My problem got worse. I deleted everything, and I couldn't find the option to import from a mail client again. I have no idea where it is, so I tried adding a single account. It imported all the trash and spam, and instantly deleted the one new email. The new account is way down at the bottom of the mail column, and I can't make it be closer to the top. I also can't add gmail addresses, they won't authorize. I'm so frustrated, I'm about to just uninstall the whole thing.
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@BrianaDragon hm not good obviously, but I'm a bit at a loss thinking of what is causing the issues. It's not like many people seem to have these kinds of issues. Then again, the descriptions we have so far from you are too vague to understand what exactly you did and what you see to provide tips that actually help.
Where is import? Go to Vivaldi button -> File -> Import from applications or files
How to get Gmail going? Go to Settings -> Mail. Click the plus sign under the accounts list and enter your GMail email address, hit continue. I have just tested this again - A popup will ask whether to use oAuth or an app specific password (which you have to set up first in GMail). I have chosen oAuth, which makes a new dialog appear for me to enter my google password, then my phone makes noise for me to confirm the two-factor authentication, and it's all done. Not sure where it fails for you
Vivaldi deletes an email just by itself? With the default, Vivaldi will always ask before purging an email. Has the email been sent to trash? How do you know an email was deleted (found in trash in Vivaldi, checked in Thunderbird, seen in a webmail interface, ...?)
Given your current frustrations with the initial setup and given that your workflow seems to depend on folders (which Vivaldi isn't tailored to), I don't think you should continue trying Vivaldi mail. If you do reconsider, I advise trying out a completely fresh profile (no legacy data) and add just one account to start with. Then, when something is odd, please state steps that we can retrack and reproduce, and explain what you see. I do understand that this is particularly hard when the frustration level is high.
All the best, and I hope your day is going to give you some joyful moments to bring your blood pressure back to where it should be
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@WildEnte
Well, right now I've got only got my zohomail connected, and I keep getting a string of "UIDPLUS not supported, cannot create imap entries" errors every few seconds in the log. I also got "[imap]Error: Socket timed out!" and "[syncAndPark, username@zohomail.com, Sent]Is logging into mail account username@zohomail.com" (I wonder if that's because I had zoho open in a browser tab at the same time, trying to clear things up?)
Trying to add gmail finally worked on one address, and took five tries on the other, but it's in now.
I've realized that I don't really need a bunch of folders, I'd be happy if I could have just one, to archive messages I want to keep but don't want in my inbox. Somehow five folders got created, I don't know how, or if I can safely delete/rename/use them. (Important, Newsletter, Notification, Shopping, Templates)
*edit: I don't seem to be able to modify these folders, I can only View, Mark, or Unsubscribe, whatever that means)By the way, sorry for the "too vague" explanations, I have brain damage and short term memory loss, so I forget things not long after I do them quite a lot. That adds to my frustration, as you may be able to imagine. Everything in life is far harder now than it was before the TBI. I'm trying to work through it, but it gets stressful pretty quickly, especially when using something as complex as Vivaldi. I want to make it work, it's just tough.
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Well, no matter what I do I can't get my live.com mail to work, so I just gave up and told that account to forward to my zohomail. Hopefully things will work from here on. I'm actually a little scared to close the browser, but I guess I should and see if it all still works after restarting.
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@BrianaDragon I'm sorry to hear that you are hurting, and please know that in no way did I want to imply with my comment about you being vague in your description off issues that you are handling anything incorrectly. Browsers and Email programs are complex, and I absolutely believe that Vivaldi is somehow letting you down. We are here to help and sort issues out.
We can get one topic solved: The five folders (Important, Newsletter, Notification, Shopping, Templates) are standard GMail folders. Vivaldi didn't create them, Vivaldi found them being set up on the GMail server. If they are empty or don't contain messages you care about, you can hide them and the messages they contain. In the mail panel, go to the 'All Accounts' section at the bottom, expand the GMail account and you'll find those five folders there. Right-click them one after another and choose 'unsubscribe'. This means the folders and messages they may contain are still there on the server, but Vivaldi ignores them. Vivaldi may ask if it should delete local copies of emails, (not sure, didn't test) but that won't delete mails on the server
Unsubscribed folders are shown with a pale grey color in the mail panel. If you don't want to see them at all, untick the checkbox "Show unsubscribed Mailboxes" in Settings - Mail - Panel (you can also search for the word 'unsubscribed' in the settings to get there quickly).I don't know about the issue with Zoho Mail. I have looked for reports on the forum containing UIDPLUS, and also for posts about Zoho Mail, but I find nothing of help. UIDPLUS is an extension to client-server communication, seems like Vivaldi asks if Zoho supports the extension and Zoho says no. I doubt that this is in any way related to having Zoho open in a tab.
I don't have a Zoho account, but I looked at the instructions and it says there that IMAP access for clients must first be activated within Zoho. I assume you have already done that for downloading messages to Thunderbird, but please confirm that you have activated external IMAP access https://www.zoho.com/mail/help/imap-access.html?zredirect=f&lb=de&zsrc=bheader#EnableIMAP. You can also in Settings - Mail that the server settings Vivaldi uses are the ones Zoho needs. While you are at it, also see the same for live.com, because based on what I read about it, it should just work and we have no reported issues with live.com here on the forum that I know of.
Once you have an account set up, Vivaldi will download your emails and integrate them into its database. Depending on how many messages you have, this will take a while (there should be a status indicator popping up every now and then in the lower left).
You also mentioned that you just want to archive emails. I do not use an archive or any folders. I work in Unread: new emails come in, they show up in Unread. I read them, when I'm done I mark them as read, and they vanish from view. If I want to find them again, I go Received or All Messages, and I search. Simple as that, and extremely effective.
But if you want to archive messages, you can also do that. Go to Settings - Mail, scroll down a bit and make sure "Create Archive folder if missing" is activated. Pressing the "archive" button (in the same row of icons where you find reply/forward, ...) will mark messages as archived and move them to that IMAP folder.
Now let me still make two general remarks about Vivaldi Mail, and then I'll talk a bit about slight differences to Thunderbird you may find odd.
Firstly, compared to other email programs out there, Vivaldi Mail is very new (the release of version 1.0 is just two years back), and it's developed by a super small team. While the maturity level of Vivaldi Mail is absolutely good for productive use, there definitely are bugs here and there, mostly minor nuisances. The volunteer testers in the community try to figure those out, to generate easy to reproduce bug reports for the team, which helps them squash those pesky bugs.
Secondly, Vivaldi Mail has a somewhat different philosophy about email organization than most other mail apps. This isn't all that obvious because there are still great similarities, but the differences may seem surprising to you, adding to confusion. The unfortunate experience with the import process probably didn't help trusting whatever the program does.
I very strongly believe that this slightly different approach makes things easier and more productive at the same time. In a nutshell, stop thinking about emails as files that are sorted into folders, where they can be here or there, or a copy in both. Vivaldi mail shows and hides emails from view based on criteria. Sometimes this is exactly the same as if you think about folders, e.g. when 'Sent' shows all emails that you have sent. But there are some differences.
From Thunderbird you may already know Tags (which Vivaldi calls Labels). If you think about it, tags are different from folders, because an email can carry a number of tags and still be in just one specific folder. For Vivaldi, "has this tag" or "is in that folder" is just other criteria based on which emails are shown or hidden. This becomes apparent when you click on "Mailing Lists", which shows you all emails where the header indicates that it was sent to a mailing list you are subscribed to. Another one is the 'Custom Folder' view, which lists all emails that you have chosen to file away into a different place than the INBOX folder on the server. This is also why the 'Custom folders' category lists the same folders you see under GMail in the 'All accounts' section, and if other email accounts of yours also had their own special folder structure, those folders would show under 'Custom folders' too.
Note that "Received" and "All Messages" don't care about what folder an email is in. By default, they show them all. That's where the View filters (link to the great help entries) above the message list come into play. These are a little like quick filters in Thunderbird. View filters allow you to go to some view (like "Received"), and then you can go one level deeper into showing and hiding emails. For example, going back to emails in custom IMAP folders, you can choose to exclude emails in such folders from being listed in Received with the View filters. Similarly, you can toggle whether or not you want to hide or show messages you have archived.
Hope some of this gets you going.
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Well, that was a pretty massive wall of text, and I had to read it a few times, but it got me into a much better place, so thank you. I finally have that feeling of a unified view that I'm used to, and I can work from there.
Sadly, I still can't get live.com to work correctly, so forwarding it through Zoho will have to do. One of my gmail addresses works fine, but the other constantly makes me authorize again and again through the day. I don't know if it's because I accidentally put a . in the address, or something else, but now that I've got messages downloaded, sorted, and things erased, I'm afraid to delete it and try again for fear of making a worse mess. As for Zoho, the tutorial you offered is the exact one I followed, but I'm still getting that error. -
@BrianaDragon ah you use more than one GMail address? I don't know much about that but I think that someone complained that Vivaldi doesn't support Gmail aliases. This might be the reason why it constantly asks you to log into not sure.
If you want to try things in a clean environment without touching what you have now, set up a second user profile. That's quite simple and quick
https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/tools/user-profiles/ -
@WildEnte I'm not using aliases, I have two separate accounts, and the second one I added keeps logging out.
For now I've moved on to the new frustration of the calendar. That's not working right either. I'm about to start searching for answers about what's going on there.