Eudora Mailbox Cleaner
Introduction
When I used the import feature in MacOS X's Mail.app to import all my
Eudora mailboxes, I realized that all my sent messages had lost their
dates and showed the date of import instead. Doing some research I found
out that this is a common problem. Also, all HTML and rich text messages
didn't turn out all that nice (meaning that you would see all formatting
tags). Since I really wanted/needed my old mail and didn't want to
continue using Eudora for various reasons, I decided to do a very
quick'n'dirty application to fix Eudora's mailboxes before importing them
into Mail.app. I was kind of overwhelmed by the response I have
gotten so far and decided to improve the program (fix bugs reported from
users and add nickname file importing).
Since the cleaned mailboxes adhere better to the standard format than the one
Eudora uses, import into other mail programs should be easier as
well (e.g., according to a user report, import into "SweetMail"
works after cleaning the mailboxes). Also, the program could probably be
used to import other mailboxes which are in the standard mbox-format (like
UNIX mail programs or Eudora for PC) in case they show similar problems - I
haven't tested this but you might give it a try (and maybe let me know
of positive results...).
Program Features
Eudora Mailbox Cleaner is a simple drag'n'drop application which
prepares Eudora mailboxes for proper importing into Mail.app and Eudora
nickname files for import into Address Book. So far, the following
functionality has been implemented:
Mailbox Importing
- Date for sent messages is set properly (i.e., not the date when the messages
are imported into Mail.app)
- text/enriched (Eudora's "rich text") messages are imported properly
- text/html messages are imported properly
Nickname Importing
- Convert Eudora nickname files into tab-separated text which can be
imported into MacOS X's Address Book using the "Import..." menu item
All of these features have only been tested importing files from
Eudora 5.1 (OS X, b18) to Mail.app in
OS X 10.1.2. Your mileage may vary for different versions...
The program has not been optimized for speed, but since you'll only have to
import your mail once that should not pose too much of a problem (it
cleaned up my several 1,000 messages - just over 10MB in size - nicely in
about 5 minutes on a 400MHz G3).
Known Limitations
Mailbox Importing
- Date for sent messages which have been imported into Eudora get the
date when they were imported into Eudora instead of the correct date they
were sent. This will be fixed as soon as I implement TOC-parsing (see
Future Enhancements)
- Message flags (sent, replied, ...) are not imported into Mail.app.
This is a problem of the Mail's import feature which ignores these
flags. When TOC-parsing will be implemented, I should be able to
convert Eudora mailboxes directly into Mail.app mbox-files without having
to use the import feature in Mail.app (again, see Future Enhancements)
Nickname Importing
- Some fields available in for Eudora nicknames are not available in
Address Book and will be ignored. Those fields are: "Nickname" (not
needed), "Full Name" (not sure why this is available at all...), and
"Notes." Furthermore, all information in the "Other" and "Photo" panes
will not be imported.
- Address Book cannot hold multiple address information for a contact.
Nicknames which have both "Home" and "Work" information will appear twice
after import, with the "Description" field set to either "Home" or "Work."
Nicknames with single addresses will have an empty "Description" field.
- Address Book only uses a single file as opposed to more than one
nickname file possible in Eudora. I tried to add the nickname filename
to the Address Book using the "Category" field. However, Address Book
doesn't allow importing that field...
- The import feature in Address Book doesn't allow for import of
groups/mailing lists. All nicknames which contain more than a single
E-Mail address will thus be skipped (I'd be glad if someone could tell me
otherwise!)
- The "Web" field in Eudora will be imported into the field "Custom 1."
If you have already assigned a different name to that field, you might
have to select the field you want in the dialog which appears (it'll be the
very last column)
Program Usage
- It might be a good idea to clean up/compact your mailboxes first
(i.e., click onto the space in the mailbox display where the number and size of the
messages is displayed). Otherwise you might get messages you already
deleted in Eudora after importing.
- Drag all the mailboxes and nickname files you want to convert onto the
program (as of now, folders don't get scanned for files contained in them,
you'll have to drag all the files you want to be cleaned onto the program).
- The cleaned mailboxes and nickname files will be placed on your Desktop
inside a folder called "Cleaned mail." Cleaned mailboxes will have the
same name as the original ones, nicknames files will have a ".txt"
suffix appended. NO files will be overwritten, if the "Cleaned mail"
folder already contains files with the respective names, "-#" will be
appended, where "#" stands for the lowest possible number.
- You now can import all mailboxes in this folder on the Desktop into
Mail.app using the "Import Mailboxes" menu item.
- Nickname files can be imported into Address Book using the "Import..."
menu item there. Just select the nickname.txt file and hit "OK" in the
dialog which appears (all fields should be properly assigned - this might
inly work on English systems though...)
Since I initially wrote this little applications just for my own need,
I won't make any promises about implementing additional features or the
time-frame to implement them. However, I'd really like to add the
following features:
- Recursive scanning of mailboxes in folders
- Proper conversion of message status flags (read, replied, forwarded,
...) from the "TOCF" resource inside the Eudora mailbox. So far, I
haven't been able to find a reference where and how exactly that
information is stored for recent versions of Eudora.
- Write some documentation (other than this page)
If you want additional features (no promises;-), encounter any problems
using my program, or have information about the format of the toc-format
Eudora uses, just drop me a
line.
Download
Disclaimer
I wrote this little program for my own personal use and added more
features after user's requests after the initial release. It is provided
"as-is" and I don't take any responsability for the integrity of your
mailboxes - as usual it is a good idea to back up your mailboxes and
nickname files before using the program.
System Requirements
The program is a Carbon application so it runs in MacOS X as well as
in older version of MacOS with CarbonLib (I only tested it in 9.2.2).
Also, a PPC processor is required. Since the program is designed to
prepare mailboxes for importing into Mail.app, none of these requirements
should be a big problem.
Download Link
You can get the latest version of the program here (188kB).
Version History
1.1 (January 27, 2002)
- Added import of Eudora nickname files. Many users asked for
this...
- Fixed a bug which would truncate every line at
256 characters and thus could result in lost texts or fragments
(introduced in 1.0.1)
- Yet another speed increase (more than 50%) when converting mailboxes
- Added a cancel button to the progress dialog so the process can be
stopped by other means than force-quitting the application (when you
cancel an import, all messages imported until then are saved in the
cleaned mailbox, uncleaned messages are not included)
- Present a dialog with a summary of the performed actions when all
cleaning is done
- Redesigned About dialog to include the homepage of Eudora Mailbox
Cleaner (you get it by opening the application instead of dropping files onto
it)
1.0.1 (January 23, 2002)
- Better parsing for missing dates. Even received messages with
missing
"Date: " header should be cleaned properly now
- Cleaned up some of the code (speed improvement on my 400MHz G3
PowerBook of roughly 20%)
- Cleaned the icon and added 128x128 icon
1.0 (January 22, 2002)
©2002 Andreas Amann