This small project aims to provide a free and open source way to convert .pst files (personal storage table) to MBOX files, structured in a way that Mozilla Thunderbird can import.

A docker container is run with the libpst library inside. The container invokes the converter.sh Bash script. The Bash script executes the readpst utility which converts all .pst files inside the in directory, and outputs them to the out directory. find commands are then run to restructure the directories so Thunderbird can import them.

1. Put the .pst files to be converted into the in folder
2. Build the docker image: docker-compose build
3. Start conversion: docker-compose up
4. The script will produce a single directory with an .sbd suffix (short for sub-directory). Example: 5db2f19c41144330b8c75bc1cb37d3cc.sbd

You need to move the contents of the .sbd directory to a Thunderbird profile directory. To find this, go to Account Settings in Thunderbird, click Local Folders in the sidebar (or your actual email account if you want to import the messages to that). Under the Message Storage heading there will be a path - move the contents of the .sbd directory to that. Restart Thunderbird.

Conversion options can be set in the convert.sh file Input and output directories can be changed in docker-compose.yml. Keep in mind that the convert.sh script does some magic based on the output directory being out. Some later versions of this might make better usage of environment variables to 'fix' this 🙂

• Paul Colby for his article: http://colby.id.au/importing-pst-files-into-thunderbird-using-libpst/
• libpst team for their tool: https://www.five-ten-sg.com/libpst/

• readpst man page: https://www.five-ten-sg.com/libpst/rn01re01.html