Thunderbird has an excellent import function to import mail from Outlook or Eudora. Due to a bug in Eudora there is a possibility your mail attachments do not get imported into Thunderbird. Here is how you can overcome this.

Eudora stores it's mail attachments to the folder attach within the Eudora data directory, e.g. c:\eudora\attach. During that process, it stores the path to the attachment in the mail header to later be able to access the attachment.

Thunderbird stores all messages and attachments of a folder within the mail system to a file of the same name within a directory structure reflecting the folder structure of the mail system, e.g. d:\thunderbird\Data\profile\Mail, if you are using the portable version of Thunderbird (which is strongly recommendable).

Eudora stores the full path of the mail directory into the header of the respective mail. If you move the entire Eudora data directory to a different location on your harddisk, these path's do not get updated (they should actually be stored relative to the Eudora data directory). For example, if you started using Eudora with p:\eudora as it's data directory and later move all the data to i:\eudora\private, the following effects will occur:

1. if Eudora finds the data directory (preferences or command line parameter), it will start and everything looks fine
2. when deleting mail messages within Eudora, the attachments belonging to these messages will not be deleted, as the absolute path points to a different location
3. when importing mail from the Eudora data directory into Thunderbird, these attachments will not get imported, as the path to the attachment cannot be found. Unfortunately, Thunderbird 2.0 does not issue any warning.

1. Import the entire Eudora mail directory
2. Scan through all your imported messages and find the path to the attachments, which are usually indicated at the end of the message body, and take note of the paths
3. Delete all the imported messages in Thunderbird

If the path indicated is on the same drive:

1. copy or move the folder attach to it's original location (the rest of the Eudora data directory can stay in it's actual location)
2. import the entire Eudora mail directory again, now Thunderbird will correctly import the attachments

If the path indicated is on a different drive:

1. start a command line (Start > Run…, enter “cmd”)
2. in the command line, type “subst d: <path>”, where <path> indicates the original path to the Eudora data directory (do not type the “)
3. note that the rest of the Eudora data directory can stay in it's actual location, only the path to attach is important
4. import the entire Eudora mail directory again, now Thunderbird will correctly import the attachments

If you moved the Eudora data directory more than once over the period you used Eudora, you need to repeat these steps for every location where the data directory resided in the past.

Example:

1. original path: i:\eudora\private
2. before that, the data resided on: p:\eudora
3. actual path: d:\eudora
4. copy the folder d:\eudora\attach to d:\eudora\private\attach (copy attach and leave it in it's current location, you need it for location p:\eudora!)
5. enter “subst i: d:\” on the command line (this is for location i:\eudora\private)
6. enter “subst p: d:\” on the command line (this is for location p:\eudora)
7. import the mail in Thunderbird