Earlier this year, I decided to change my email from Hotmail to Gmail. I made a new Gmail email address and used Thunderbird to copy mails over from my old Hotmail email to the new Gmail account.
However, I have noted that the copied over emails in the new Gmail account still have the old Hotmail email in the "to" header field of the old emails.
I want to update the header of those old emails by replacing the old Hotmail email in the "to" address to my new Gmail one. I know it is not advised to modify received emails but I would like to maintain a clear trail in my new Gmail inbox so that there is not any mention of the old Hotmail email in my new inbox.
I have tried two attempts using Thunderbird to update the email headers:
- I tried modifying the source email files in the Thunderbird profile directory as per this post (Edit Received Email Messages in Mozilla Thunderbird by Editing the Source) by replacing the old email occurrences with the new one --- but the changes were neither shown in my local Thunderbird inbox or the online IMAP Gmail account.
- I also tried using the Header Tools Lite add-on for Thunderbird to update the email "to" header field. While this attempt worked in changing the email header, I realized that the timestamp of the email was also changed to the "now" time rather than when that email was actually received. This makes the email come at the top of my inbox rather than at its original received date (old order in the inbox).
I am open to using any other tools (am not only limited to Thunderbird) so will appreciate any tips on how I can modify the "to" address of my old emails (while keeping the old received date/timestamp) using either Thunderbird or something else?