As someone who has switched to a Mac from Windows some time back, is there any benefit to using Apple’s Mail app as opposed to using Thunderbird for my email? I have several years of saved email that I would like to import to Mail if there is any reason to do so. One of the reasons I’ve continued to use Thunderbird is that I can’t find a way to import my saved email into Mail.
— James Topper
I'm not up-to-date on what Thunderbird does today. But Mail is a pretty full-featured application. Plus, it has hooks to work well with iPhoto and other applications in Mac OS X that I'm not sure would work with Thunderbird.
Importing mail from Thunderbird to Mail is pretty easy as you can just choose File, Import Mailboxes and then there is an option to import from Thunderbird.
I had an issue when first starting Mail, and had to enter a default email account before it would open. Once open I was able to import all my Thunderbird messages, however it did not import the settings for the additional email accounts I have on Comcast, Yahoo, and GMail. Is there a way to import account settings or do I have to manually enter the account info?
You should probably manually enter them in. Should just be server names, IDs, passwords and a few other things.
Gary, I did that, thanks for your help. One more question about Mail, when it puts email in my junk folder that isn't junk and I mark them as "not junk" does it learn to not filter those messages?
No. I don't believe that Mail learns from that. See episode 224 (http://macmost.com/using-mail-rules.html) for a way to use rules to bypass this if you need it.
Thanks again Gary. I'll take a look at that episode since I should learn to use Mail rules anyway now that I've switched to Mail.
I am glad I found your podcasts, I have learned so much from them. You go a great job of explaining to those of us unfamiliar with how the Mac OS does things.