how to move email to new system

[Rashkae]

Default User wrote:

> Extra credit question: why do email programs not store email messages as
> normal text files?  Or would that be too simple, be too easy to
> maintain, and make too much sense?  
> 


I'll go for the extra credit.  Just about all the Open Source e-mail 
applications, including Evolution and Thunderbird, do, in fact, store 
e-mail in a plain text file.  They also use use supplementary index 
files so the e-mail program can open and list messages without serially 
scanning the entire e-mail folder ever time, but that's optional and can 
be re-generated at any time.