1333595 - import file type list empty

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Thunderbird :: Migration, enhancement)

Description

[Rufus]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:50.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/50.0
Build ID: 20161212000000

Steps to reproduce:

run T-bird

Tool/Import;   select "Mail" radio button;   Next






Actual results:

"Please select the type of file..." list is empty


Expected results:

Display a list of file types w/radio button. Include the format type (eg. "mbox"; and "mboxo" if that  variant needs to be spec'd separately). IOW do NOT simply name a source application (eg. Outlook); include the _type_ of file in the list. Or, maybe better, offer to toggle between an application list and a format type list.

"Next" button proceeds to dialogue displaying files found in whatever default directory T-bird wants to look at; probably w/radio buttons... 

 AND (!) that same dialogue provides the option  button to open a file system browse dialogue (the usual "Open" or "Save" type dialogue) with the file extension filter set correctly - instead of forcing the user to select a file from T-birds default dirs. But allow the file extension filter to be changed or set empty because not all files from different systems come with the usual extensions.

Why? Because I need "Import" to get files from where I tell it to, not just in some default locations. That's kinda the whole deal w/"Import".

Comment 1

[Jorg K (CEST = GMT+2)]

Well, import isn't TB's best feature. Outlook import has been broken for a while, Apple Mail import, too. TB can import from Outlook Express (how useful!) and Becky (some Japanese client).

TB isn't really an "e-mail hack" tool, ready to import mbox, etc. As long as the mbox file is of standard format, you can just drop it into a folder in your mails storage and TB will pick it up. Make sure no line starts with "From", see bug 1276139 / bug 1332889.

Have you tried ImportExportTools (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/thunderbird/addon/importexporttools/).

Comment 2

[Rufus]

I guess then T-bird is broken vv Import/Export and working w/less than perfect files. I did try Import/Export add-in several days ago but it did not work for me.  I tried moving the mbox file into T-birds directories. It loses multiple messages following an encounter with "From " in the message body (which is why I opened one of those bugs you linked to), instead of adding a dummy msg for body text following the delimiter and then continuing normally with the rest of the file. It appears T-bird will not work for old concatenated mbox files which may have a few irregularities. Happily, there is an alternative and I will use Evolution as my archive reader because I need to proceed on this research, timely.

Since it's hard to imagine designing a mail client w/out a good import/export system, I guess this is a dev resource problem, or maybe priorities are changing for the Mozilla packages as a whole. Not sure what's going on here, but good Import/Export is a pretty basic meat/potatoes capability. Seems silly to have to add it as a feature request... But if that will help, do change this "bug" to a feature request.