How to Merge Eudora into Apple Mail?

You can only assign points for threads you start.

I should have mentioned that I mainly use a Thunderbird derivative for PPC. I have POP arranged so that all my Macs have identical in and out mail covering the last 15 years.

Thunderbird forums are more active in listing faults and asking for extras. It is far more configurable than Apple Mail and very reliable.

They both have good search facilities and HTML.

My earlier post gave you a easy free upgrade path with some flexibility.

The mail issue you will have is Eudora's non-standard way of storing attachments in a separate folder. You may never get them properly put back into the original emails and hence historic mail may never work properly if an attachment is involved unless you use Eudora.

"The mail (main?) issue you will have is Eudora's non-standard way of storing attachments in a separate folder. You may never get them properly put back into the original emails and hence historic mail may never work properly if an attachment is involved unless you use Eudora."

Actually Emailchemy kept all the correct dates, headers AND all attachments that were present in Eudora were right there in Mail.

In my case even if Emailchemy was much more than the $29.95 cost it would have been worth it. I had over 17 years worth of email in Eudora. I did get rid of a lot of it but there were many emails I wanted to keep.

One caveat. Compare the number of original emails in Eudora to the converted ones in Mail to make sure you got all of them.

That is interesting.

Were they put back into mbox format with standard mime or was the conversion only compatible with Apple Mail?

Emailchemy reads 27 different email formats ranging from AOL to Unix-style or mbox format and writes to:

• Apple Mail .mbox folders
• Entourage Archives (.rge files)
• Thunderbird folders
• MBOX files (RFC-2822 mailboxes)
• EML files (folders of .eml RFC-2822 message files)
• CSV files (comma-separated value files)
• IMAPdir (Binc IMAP maildir)
• Maildir++ (Courier IMAP maildir)

An overview of what it does below fan be found here and an overview below.

• Converts proprietary email formats to the official Internet standard format for maximum compatibility
• Convert all your old email files with a single product

  cross-platform solution runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux

  • no need to re-install or run old email programs
  • convert Windows email files on a Mac or Linux computer, and vice-versa
• Industrial-strength accuracy relied upon by law enforcement and forensic agencies around the world
• Includes IMAP email server to simplify importing
• Upload converted email to Google Apps email accounts

I'd strongly encourage anyone faced with a difficult email migration to check it out. When you start the program you:

1. Choose what kind of email you want to convert. If it's Eudora...

2. Select your Eudora folder (it tells you where it should be in your hard drive).

3. Click convert.

4. You see the below and choose what you want to convert it to.

5. If you're planning on using Apple's Mail program you choose File/Import Mailboxes... and choose the location that you saved the converted mailboxes from.

6. All the mailbox folders from Eudora are brought into Mail and are in a mailbox folder called "Import" From there you can move them out, re-arrange, etc.

As I mentioned before, there is also a IMAP server that can be used for the conversion. This involves setting up an IMAP server on your computer that Emailchemy uses to import from. I tried that but could not get the server to work despite many tries and changes to the setting. The instructions for this are a bit lacking.

One other method that can be used is to archive the email messaages from your old email client. I downloaded a demo of Mail Archiver X to try it out. I ended up buying that as well. It made an archive of my Eudora emails, which go back to 1997. Like Emailchemy all the attachments and folder structure is there. A person could use this to keep all their old emails from a former email client as an archive and start fresh with a new program.

You could also use it to archive your emails in the following formats - including PDF's or Filemaker.

Hope this helps clarify things.

I could not see what Mail Archiver X does other than the PDF option. Does it combine folders into a single mbox file? Does it work with Eudora attachments?

For the technically minded proper mbox files are very portable without any import/export software or third party utilities. You can even move them direct from servers to clients. You can also edit them with text editors.

However mail client that don't use proper mbox files cause a variety of problems:

1. The separate attachments folder used by Eudora is one of the most difficult to resolve without a very good utility.
2. Whilst Apple Mail does not use normal mbox it is very easy to convert without any software - may be tedious if you have many folders - I only have one folder per year.

The following is a very comprehensive article which has quite a lot about Eudora mail conversion:

https://tidbits.com/article/12382

Neville, thanks for the follow-up. Being a highly non-technical person with no support if things go wrong, I am looking for the simplest way to deal with the migration and I do not mind paying a few $s to make it easy. Simple is more more important to me than the $s. I am exploring options, reading what I can find that was written on the topic, etc. before I do it. So I am assessing your suggestion but I am not ready for it. I do not even know what "Thunderbird derivative for PPC" means....

Thanks, Neville. I read this useful (but somewhat dated) article. Can MAC Mail with Mavericks import without any problems a STANDARD MBOX file? You mentioned that MAC Mail doesn't use standard MBOX.

Glenn, thanks so much for taking all this time to share your experience so clearly and with details. Since I am moving from Windows, using Emailchemy gets a little bit more complicated. From their manual, it appears that I have to run it on the Windows side and the instructions unfortunately are not clear when you move from Windows. I sent them an Email for clarification (they do not appear to have any phone support) and I am waiting for the answer. You mentioned that you could not use their IMAP server and I am wondering if you asked for help and if so, were they responsive.

I apologize for a silly question. Where do you find the number of messages in each mailbox in Eudora and then on the MAC for comparison? If you saw differences, how did you locate whatever might be missing?

The archiving approach is an interesting one. It seems that I would have to first migrate to the MAC and then import the MBOX created by Emailchemy into MailArchiver, after which I could just read Eudora Emails (w. their attachements) without Eudora. Do I understand this correctly?

Thanks again.

Here is a little published way to do without charge on Windows:

http://qwerky.50webs.com/eudorarescue/

Use this on Windows to convert to mbox and/or Thunderbird and then import to Apple Mail.

I cannot test it for you as I don't have Windows.

I advise that whatever you decide to do you should make a full email backup before you start - get technical help if you have problems with this.

Suzy, If you're moving from Windows to Mac the manual says:

"Moving your email to a different operating system

If you are moving your email to a computer that runs different operating system (i.e. switching from Windows to Macintosh), we recommend that you perform the conversion on the target computer (the one you are moving the email to). "

You can copy your Eudora folder over to a USB thumb drive, insert it into your Mac and point to the folder on the USB drive when Emailchemy asks for where your source Eudora folder is.

When I ran into trouble using the IMAP server I didn't ask for help, just switched to exporting from Eudora/importing into Mail.

"I apologize for a silly question. Where do you find the number of messages in each mailbox in Eudora and then on the MAC for comparison? If you saw differences, how did you locate whatever might be missing?"

In the mailbox view of Eudora at the bottom of the window it shows you how many messages are in that mailbox. In Mail, the mailboxes on the left after you import will show you how many messages are unread. When I imported them they all showed as unread so that was simple.

"The archiving approach is an interesting one. It seems that I would have to first migrate to the MAC and then import the MBOX created by Emailchemy into MailArchiver, after which I could just read Eudora Emails (w. their attachements) without Eudora. Do I understand this correctly?"

I went from Mac to Mac but if it were me I'd download the demo version of Email Archiver X, copy your Eudora folder to a USB drive and access it from your Mac. You can see then if it works before buying it.

Nevill, you asked;

"I could not see what Mail Archiver X does other than the PDF option. Does it combine folders into a single mbox file? Does it work with Eudora attachments?"

• It keeps all your mailbox folders from Eudora, not a single mbox file.
• It keeps your Eudora attachements.
• It actually looks like an email client as show below.
• As for output:

There are 2 main formats: the internal database (which is what I used) and - if you have a Filemaker license - a free and open Filemaker template. If you archive to the internal database you can export the complate or partial data to Evernote, Filemaker, PDF, mbox, Text (csv), or XML.

Take a look at the web site.

The message, attachements and headers are in three tabs on the right as shown below. This email I've clicked on the attachment which is shown on the right.

As I said, it looks like email as shown below. This is my email from Eudora that was imported into Mail Archiver X. Mailboxes on the right are the same exact ones that were in Eudora. The messages for the selected mailbox in the center and the message is on the right.

Meant to say:

"Mailboxes on the left are the same exact ones that were in Eudora. The messages for the selected mailbox in the center and the message is on the right.

Glenn, thanks for the additional helpful info. What through me off in the Emailchemy manual is the additional sentence on top of page 11:

"Copy your original data files over to the new operating system first and then run Emailchemy there. (An exception to this rule is when converting Eudora files.)"

I hope that the vendor will get back to me re. questions I asked assuming that their program has to run on the Windows side.

Thanks again.

Neville, you are a great source for freebes. I am looking at this program. It seems that it was not updated since 2005, I sent a message to understand if it still works, etc. Thanks.

Based on suggestions in this thread I decided to try Emailchemy to migrate my PC based Eudora mail to an iMAC. I read their manuals. As commented by others, the manual from Emailchemy is cryptic and hard to follow. There is nothing to explain how one needs to use the application when migrating from a PC to a MAC. As it turns out the product has to run on both ends, on the PC and the MAC. Since I am not a technical user, I tried to get help from their Email based Help Desk. They do not appear to be setup to help individual users. Quoting from their replies: “you may also convert to the IMAP format and use the ImportServer -- but that's more complicated and if you're not confident of your understanding of email clients and servers, you may want to avoid it.”. “Just follow the prompts in Emailchemy and do what they say. This can be a complicated move and I recommend you ask for help with it from someone you know who may be more familiar with Mac computers. Explaining how to use the Mac and the Mac Mail app over email will be difficult.” When I tried to follow up with them they just ignored my Emails and never replied.

Luckily I also located the Aid4Mail application from Fookes Software (https://www.fookes.com). I read their excellent manual and contacted Fookes with additional questions. I got very clear and helpful answers very quickly and was reassured that the application will convert on the PC my Emails to MBOX files that can be then copied to the MAC and imported into Apple's mail. I tested the software which was very easy to run and then licensed it for 2 weeks and did the migration. All my Emails were migrated while my folder structure was preserved. The dates, and all of the header info were also preserved and all attachments were kept with their respective messages. Messages were marked unread which helped me compare the message count from Eudora with the message count (available for unread messages) in MAC Mail. Julian from Fookes Software's Help Desk even recommended using a free application for migrating my Eudora address book (Dawn). Dawn's website: http://mysite.verizon.net/zakharin/software/Dawn/

I could not be more pleased with what I got for the money ($29). I highly recommend the application and the company for their excellent support.