[GRLUG] Move mail from Time Machine to Thunderbird on Linux

[Grand Rapids Linux Users Group]

As I recall, ICS files can just be (mostly) concatenated together to 
form a larger file you can import.  It's a pretty simple text format.  
You just have to remove the beginning and ending VCALENDAR blocks.  
Please keep in mind that this is completely untested, but something like 
this might work:

echo "BEGIN:VCALENDAR" > combined-calendar.ics
find . -name "*.ics" -type f -exec cat {} \; | grep -v "BEGIN:VCALENDAR" 
| grep -v "END:VCALENDAR" >> combined-calendar.ics
echo "END:VCALENDAR" >> combined-calendar.ics

Warm Regards,
Kyle Maas



On 8/21/22 14:14, Grand Rapids Linux Users Group wrote:
> My Mac (early 2011; Sierra) hard drive finally died. So I'm stuck with 
> what I have on Time Machine as I move to Ubuntu and Thunderbird. 
> ("Inherited" the Mac from my wife when she got a new one in 2017.)
>
> When I look in Time Machine at Library/Calendars I see 8 "calendars" 
> directories with "Events" sub-directories. In four of them, the Events 
> sub-dir is empty.
>
> Three of the others just have a few events (11, 127, and 2300) linked 
> to a short time period (Jan 2019) or a certain day (16 Sept 2017 or 
> "Thu". The  8th calendar has 35K items from 16 Sept 2017 (when I 
> started using the "inherited" Macbook Pro) to the present.
>
> That's all background.
>
> Thing is, each item is an .ics. It looks to me like Thunderbird in my 
> new Ubuntu box treats each .ics as a separate calendar. So I don't 
> think I can just import 37,000+ "calendars" into Thunderbird.
>
> Apparently the "right" thing to do is to "export" from Mac calendar to 
> iCal which, I gather, creates a unified .ics one can import to 
> Thunderbird. That train has left the station with the death of my Mac 
> hard drive.
>
> I suppose I could grab my wife's Macbook Pro on which I have an 
> account and "restore" from Time Machine to Library on my account and 
> do the export. But she's kind of proprietary about her machine...
>
> Does anyone know of any other way to get from the 37,000 ics's in Time 
> Machine to Thunderbird on Ubuntu?
>
> Thanks.
>
>