how to restore email from only a full website backup?

Question

I am in a helpless position right now..Till last month,I was hosting my website and email accounts with hostgator and everything was going fine till I decided to switch hosting for some services that they dont currently offer.I cancelled my account with them and was given a couple of hours to move my files.I created backup of the entire website from cPanel and downloaded everything from their server to my PC.The problem is,since this was a first time procedure for me,I didnt know that I had to download all my emails to my desktop client.I had read some tutorials providing information on moving my website to a new host and all ,but none of them mentioned about email backups.Now i have all my emails downloaded onto my desktop as part of the full website backup and not on any email client.And Hostgator has closed my account with them.The new host I have decided to move my website to,doesnt host email and they are asking me to host my emails on google apps.Thats ok with me,but I need all the emails in my account since all of them contain my registration and billing details and passwords and other such important things.Please,can someone find me a solution to this problem?

Answer 1

Unfortunately, there is no good way to move the email from a cPanel backup into GMail. Ordinarily, you would either use a desktop client to download the messages and push them to GMail or have GMail fetch the email directly.

You can still get to the email, in a way, as they are stored as individual files within the backup. Not a perfect solution, but you could use a text editor to view the content, in a pinch.

Live and learn, I suppose.