I have old folders in TB for a RETIRED account. I'm trying to move the mail to a new mac. If I want more than headers Thunderbird wants a password? Solution?

Question

As I said above.
I had moved a bunch of old emails using TBird and I'm trying to get them moved to a new mac. The email has long been cancelled and the company who hosted it doesn't exist any more. The domain has changed hands a couple of times.
I set up the accounts on the mac that are still active, backed up as told from the old machine.
When I follow the procedure, I get the headers of the messages only and I can't move them to any other photo. TBird gets in a loop of asking for a password for me to move the mail.
I have read/write privileges on everything. Yet these messages are useless. I've tried to import them into the mail app, and apple can import 2 folders but the others don't show up as an option.
Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Thanks for the suggestions.
I ended up finding a solution on the macworld hints site here: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20050402143519725
Navigate to ~/Library: Thunderbird: Profiles: your_profile: Mail: Local Folders. Identify the mailboxes you seek to use in Mail.app.
Each mailbox has three pieces to it - i.e. inbox.sbd, inbox.msf and inbox with no extension.
*Take the file with no extension, hold down the Option key (so it also stays in the folder) and drag it to the desktop.
*Rename this copy with .mbox as the file extension. For example, inbox becomes inbox.mbox.
* Open Mail.app and select File: Import, choose Other, and navigate to the desktop and click Choose. (Choose the file you just renamed.) Your mailbox(es) should appear in the import window and will import into Mail.app.
[robg adds: This earlier hint provided a script to clean up Mozilla Mail's files for import to Mail. This is apparently due to a problem with Mail's handling of whitespace (according to the posted comments). Since Thunderbird is evolved from Mozilla Mail, there may be a similar issue with importing some mboxes. If you have issues, you might want to try the script from the previous hint...]