Restoring mail messages from encrypted TimeMachine backup

Question

I'm halfway there:
I need to recover hundreds of e-mails from my work exchange account
via Time Machine backup.  The complication is that the backup of my
user directory is encrypted.
I have recovered the relevant folders (I think) by working in
Finder to open the sparse.bundle of my user directory with my
password,
pulling what looks like the mailbox from
myUser>Library>Mail>[email protected]
and inside that,
inbox.ewsmbox
contains
.plist
attachments (folder)
messages (folder)
and the messages and attachments seem to open up just fine, if I pick
one and double-click on them.
But I cannot figure out how to import them back into mail so I can
work with them.
"Import" doesn't seem to work--"Import from Apple Mail" or "Import
from mailbox" won't recognize the whole EWS-named folder or the inner
folder 'inbox'.  Drag n' drop of the EWS-usernamed folder onto the
mail
window doesn't work, nor does drag n' drop of the messages themselves
or the "inbox" folder.  Drag n' drop of the messages into my current
mail directory in with the other newer messages doesn't let them show
up in the mail window.
How do I get the messages back into my inbox, ideally with their
proper attachments?

Answer 1

Thanks for the suggestion.
As I tried it, thunderbird 5.0 (the current version I just downloaded) mail import is so automated (would you like to import "apple mail" or "eudora mail"? were the only options) that it only imported local files held on my mac from mac mail, and not my currently active mailboxes, nor did it let me direct it to the folder I cared about ([email protected]), and it ignored that folder even if I put that folder manually among the mailboxes that it did import correctly.
Did you have another way to import things in mind?