My parents have finally upgraded to a Windows 10 PC from XP and, amongst other things, I need to set up their emails on the new machine.

I use Outlook so not know much about the built in Windows 10 mail but I’ve just had a look and it looks pants (in line with a lot of Microsoft’s included apps). There appears to be no import function; is there any way I can import their old emails from Thunderbird into Mail or are we better off just sticking to Thunderbird on Windows 10?

are the emails retained on the server?
A lot will depend on the mail provider will cost you nothing to connect it to the Windows Mail app and see what happens

I don’t think so, although I can’t be sure without looking at their Thunderbird settings but I, but you’re right we can always link Mail up and see what happens (I think that the first issue will be that they’ve forgotten their passwords 😟).

I’ll have a go and see what happens.

How to Import Thunderbird to Windows 10 Mail App?

That is a method but just from googleing not testing, if they are happy with thunderbird it’s probably easier just to migrate that as it is all handled fine there but leave mail on the server from now on, it’s not like mailboxes get full anymore

I’ll have a look at that thanks, although it looks like you might need to buy a license for the tool. I’m sure that we’ll get something sorted.

To be honest I’d file this under “why bother” I reckon. If I had to do it I’d use something like Thunderbird. I haven’t used a stand-alone email client in years now (outside of a corporate environment), I just use Hotmail / Gmail in a web browser.

If the emails are retained on the server it should just be a case of banging in your POP3 / SMTP / IMAP settings on the new client and standing back. If they aren’t retained on the server then, well, I hope there’s nothing in there they’d be upset to lose.

These days I just use Gmail in the browser.

But if the emails aren’t on the server I’m sure in the the past I’ve set up the client to use IMAP and then pasted a load of old emails in to a sub folder of the inbox. Synchronised everything and they appeared in Gmail.

It was a few years ago when I moved across from Yahoo, but I’m sure that’s all I did.