[zewm]

Hey folks, I ran into a small problem and was hoping someone could help me find a solution.

[set-up]
A few weeks ago my mom's PC died and so I told her she could use my iBook to go online and check her websites and emails while her computer is down. So I made her a new user account on my ibook and all went well. Today we got her computer back up and running and we ran into a small problem concerning emails
[set-up]

So my question is:
How can we successfully export email from Mail.app and move them over to her computer in a readable format. I checked ~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/ but all that shows up is a .plist and some .mbox files. How can we make her emails readable/saveable onto her PC running Windows XP?

edit: Forgot to mention she is using Mozilla Thunderbird (or optionally Outlook Express)

[Chris Grande]

You could use Thunderbird on the Mac and import the email from Mail, then copy the Thunderbird files to the PC since they use the same format on both platforms.

[CharlesS]

Does her mail account support IMAP? If so, just upload the messages to the server via IMAP, and then download them onto her machine.

[CatOne]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
Does her mail account support IMAP? If so, just upload the messages to the server via IMAP, and then download them onto her machine.

This gets my strong recommendation as the BEST method. A .Mac account could be used to do this -- you can "push" the messages to the server and then "pull" them down to the PC, and they're completely intact -- dates, attachments, and everything.

[zewm]

nah, I think my ISP only does POP

[Apfhex]

If it's POP, it depends on if you had Mail.app set to delete messages from the server. If not, then they should still be there and get downloaded when your mom checks her email on the PC.

[EmmEff]

You could always resend all of the email to yourself (be sure not to "check mail" again on the Mac, though) and then retrieve it with the PC. This would seemingly be the easiest idea, but it might screw up the mail headers (never done this with Mail.app)

[Apfhex]

Actually, I just remembered Mail has the perfect solution for this: redirect. I copied this from Mail's Help:

Redirecting email

Redirecting email you receive is slightly different from forwarding it.

When you forward email, the recipient sees your name in the From column and the date you forwarded it in the Date & Time column.

When you redirect an email message, the recipient sees the original sender's name in the From column and the time when they composed the message in the Date & Time column.

Redirecting a message is useful when a message is sent to you inadvertently and you want to pass it along to its intended recipient. When the intended recipient replies, the reply will go to the original sender, not to you. If you forward the message, you could receive a reply.

When reporting unsolicited mail (spam), redirecting is sometimes the best way to preserve the original content of the message.

Open Mail and select a message.
Choose Message > Redirect.
Enter text if you want your message to appear.
Click Send.

Your name remains in the To field at the top of the message so the recipient knows you originally received the email.

A segmented arrow appears in the Status column next to messages you redirect.