does this other program explicitly accept mail in a CSV format? It would be very unusual!

Hmmmmmmmm I know that contact info is imported as a csv, now I'm not sure about the emails. I'll contact them and ask. Thanks for responding.

I just heard from the software tech support. The say the files need to be EML, not csv. I have an add-on for thunderbird that will let me do that. Thanks for your help.

Your can also just drag and drop them from Thunderbird to the file system.

Do you mean using windows explorer or somehow from within the Thunderbird program? Or am I totally missing what you said?

Just drag from Thunderbird's list to your desktop or windows explorer. Although I have just noticed that appear to be limited to one mail at a time these days. So theimport export tools would be far more efficient. I assume that is the add-on you refered to earlier.

Yes, that's the tool I'm referring to. I'm about to give it a try. Thanks!!

ok, another question: the EML files can easily be imported. I tried it with one of my folders. I have LOTS of folders, many with subfolders. When I use the import/export add on to export, it works fine if I tag one or two folders. But if I try to export several folders, or a folder with sub-folders, the export process seems to get hung up. Any ideas?

Quite probably your anti virus program is barfing on all that activity. I notice your using windows XP, so you are probably already using a slower machine. compound that with an anti virus trying to scan probably thousands of new files per second and the whole machine will be getting bogged down. Thunderbird also tends to run on a single main thread, so things can easily be blocked if the anti virus can not keep up. Finally the add-on uses loops that continue until they complete, repeating folder after folder and email after email. They do not pause to allow other processing within Thunderbird (as far as I can see). So the user interface can appear frozen until the loops all complete. A progress bar would be good. But it would also make the whole process slower.

Thanks Matt. I'll disconnect from the internet, then turn off my anti-virus to see if that makes a difference. If not, I guess I'll need to export the folders one by one. I appreciate all of your help with this.