Duane,
You mentioned in a post on Beta that it should be possible to import
the downloaded archives into Thunderbird. I haven't checked into it
much yet, but thought maybe you could offer a little insight to keep
me from reinventing the wheel if you've done it. Local folder? Each
group separate? Add-ons needed? Other tips?
I've not done it, that assertion was based on the use of standard .mbx format for the messages. I'm pretty sure that's the format Thunderbird itself uses - each mailbox is represented by two files: one without an extension which is in .mbx format, and one with the extension .msf which is an index of some kind. Why Thunderbird chose to put the messages themselves in a file with no extention, rather than the .mbx extension, is a mystery to me. It is inconvenient in Windows, but maybe it made sense to people from the *nix world.
Each group would be a separate .mbx file, and so would appear in Thunderbird as a separate folder.
What I'm not sure of is whether it would work better to simply drop those files in the "right" folder within an existing Thunderbird installation, or try and use the Import function. In my experience the Import function is wonky and makes way too many assumptions about what it is getting and where from. But then I haven't done a substantive import since about version 3 of Thunderbird...
-- Shal
Shal Farley