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

Grand Rapids Linux Users Group grlug at grlug.org
Tue Aug 23 15:17:39 EDT 2022


Yeah. I just found a couple of online links that do this also. I'll give 
it a try.

to Kyle (earlier reply): Unfortunately (in this case), I don't use iCloud.

On 8/23/22 12:22, Grand Rapids Linux Users Group wrote:
> 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.
>>
>>
>


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