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How to Merge Eudora into Apple Mail?

Mac OS 10.5.8 is now obsolete. So I'm planning to upgrade to Lion 10.7.x.


Since Lion does not support Eudora, I must switch to some other email client. After many hours of research I have decided to switch to Apple Mail.


Unfortunately, the two popular conversion applications (Emailchemy and Eudora Mailbox Cleaner) appear no longer in existence.


Any good tips on how to merge Eudora into Apple Mail on OS 10.5.8 (so I can upgrade to Lion 10.7.x)?


Thank you.


Scott "pulling his hair out" in Saint Louis

iMac Intel Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Jul 24, 2012 5:13 PM

Reply
49 replies

Sep 13, 2017 1:07 PM in response to bonedog

If you are still thinking about this: I also delayed upgrading my Mac because I could not bear to part with Eudora. Bought a new iMac with Sierra operating system. Put the Eudora folder on the desktop of new computer. Converted my Eudora files in my Eudora folder with Emailchemy. Used the Import Mailboxes function in Apple Mail to import the mailboxes. Didn't take long, I checked, everything was there and readable. All subject headers read "Purchase Emailchemy" or something like that, which was expected - the unlicensed version is just to make sure it will convert your mail properly. Then I bought the Emailchemy license, threw out the whole Import mailbox containing the Eudora data. Ran the converter again, imported again and voila! Everything is there. All mail was marked as unread so I did go to each folder (within folder, within folder) to Select All and Mark As Read. No big deal.

If I had known earlier how easy this was I wouldn't have waited all these years!

Remember not to discard your Eudora folder ever, but certainly not before running the licensed version of Emailchemy.

I find Apple Mail to be flexible and intuitive, it must have changed a lot from the early years.

Sep 20, 2017 4:48 PM in response to Joanna39

I moved from Eudora to Apple Mail 2 years ago and I am still mourning. Maybe I am missing something but I found Eudora a lot more powerful than Apple Mail. Its sort and search capabilities were a lot better. Many times I try to sort by a sender and a mess comes up. I demoed it to Apple support (they were able to see it on my screen) and I was told that they do not have reported bugs about this and there is nothing they can do about it. Search is also very weak. Maybe you are using a different version of Apple Mail. I am on Mavericks, using the latest version of Mail for it.

Jul 24, 2012 11:32 PM in response to BDAqua

There are numerous articles and forum posts that warn about issues migrating Eudora files and attachments. You will also find recommendations from IT experts to use Emailchemy or Eudora Mailbox Cleaner.


It is obvious that I am worried about the migration process. Yet you merely suggest that I set up Mail and press the import button.


Thank you for your help, BDAqua. I think. Are you unaware of any problems migrating Eudora to Mail, or did you really intend to sound condescending?

Jul 26, 2012 9:00 PM in response to BDAqua

Well, I imported Eudora into Mail. And just as I feared, the import generated numerous issues.


1. Most messages show the date received, while others, apparently just messages sent from me, are dated *today.* (This is a minor disaster.)


2. All imported messages are marked as unread. (This is fixable, but will take hours of work to resolve.


3. Cannot tell when new incoming "moved" mail is downloaded from the server. (That's because new incoming moved messages are hidden inside mail folders among the many other mail folders with "unread" messages. So I cannot tell if a folder has new mail in it or not. I am afraid important new messages will be lost. Is there a way to clearly identify new moved messages?)


4. Several crucially important images are missing from some mailboxes. Rebuilding does not seem to help. (This is a serious issue which might become a major disaster.)


Does anyone know where I can find instructions on how to repair this mess?


Upgrades: There's gotta be a better way.

Jul 26, 2012 11:04 PM in response to BDAqua

Nope...unless I'm doing something wrong, "Select All" does not work. The only way I can mark "all messages as read" is one folder at a time, which will take hours.


Thank you for the ThunderBird suggestion. But I tried it some years ago. Well, actually it was Penelope, which is ThunderBird with a Eudora skin. That was a big mistake as it wrecked havoc on my Eudora files. So I got rid of it and went back to the real Eudora. But as anyone who uses Eudora knows, there is currently no good substitute. Which is why I decided on converting to Apple Mail.


In addition to the issues I listed previously, below are 2 additional issues I discovered after importing Eudora into Mail:


* Attachments Folder is empty except for 4 email messages.

* Spool Folder is empty except for 1 folder: In.temp, which contains 12 messages (11 of which are identical).


So, same question:

Does anyone know where I can find instructions on how to repair this mess?

Jul 30, 2012 9:07 AM in response to bonedog

I was in the same predicament and had been delaying and delaying for years. Luv my eudora and just couldn't come to making the switch. Unfortunately, with both an iPhone 4s and iPad 2 using iCloud, and mobile me shutting down, had to take the plunge to Mountain Lion this weekend --in order to sync properly on my late 2008 aluminum MacBook.


Fortunately, the migration from Eudora to Apple Mail wasn't too painful. Forced me to do a lot of housekeeping with 15-20+ yr old files, LOL. Like moving house, when in doubt, trash it. Streamlined as many folders and sub-folders are possible, consolidated as much as possible, then hit the transfer button on apple mail. Again, my address book pretty comprehensive so didn't lose too many email addresses. And I have my old office iMac running Eudora as a backup. I didn't have to rebuild any mailboxes, etc. Took a little bit of time setting up multiple POP mail accounts, still in process of buidling 'rules' to take over the eudora filters.


And I hate the Mail interface but life isn't fair, is it?


😁😁

Sep 20, 2012 12:23 PM in response to bonedog

Hi folks,


I just helped someone move 350k messages from a series of Eudora archives to Apple Mail. Anyone who says they had great luck with Apple Mail directly importing their Eudora messages is either a liar or didn't notice (or care) that their dates were all messed up. So here are some notes.


First, Eudora Mailbox Cleaner only runs under 10.6 since it's PPC and requires Rosetta. So you're gonna need a 10.6 or earlier mac (or virtual machine).

Second, After running Eudora Mailbox Cleaner, you need to poke Apple Mail into rebuilding all those mailboxes. You can go Mailbox->Rebuild for each one if you only have a handful, but an alternative is to intentionally break (aka delete) Apple Mail's mailbox cache. You can do this by deleting/renaming the file called 'Mailboxes' (IIRC, I don't have a 10.6 mac in front of me to double check). Next time you open Apple Mail it will rebuild all your local mailboxes.

Third, Eudora Mailbox Cleaner will terminate if you throw it a particularly complex (or large group of mailboxes). I assume it has something to do with the way it walks mailboxes. You're going to want to break up any mail folder that has a number of large subfolders into multiple folders or imports. So for example, if you had the following structure:

folder/

folder/a (big)

folder/b (big)

folder/c (big)

Eudora mailbox cleaner will likely crash. If you reparent your folder structure so it's something like this:

folder/part1/a

folder/part2/b

folder/part3/c

This way no individual sub folder contains folders that exceed some magical threshold. I never figured out exactly how/why this happens, but if you put your big mailboxes each in their own folder, the import will usually just work. You might also have to break up your import into smaller chunks.


A couple other things to note, Eudora allows pretty much anything in mailbox names including ~><*%$@&/\|` etc. While most of these will continue to work fine in Apple Mail, it's in your best interest to rename them to something more normalized to steer clear of trouble.


As for Lion, I never successfully got Lion Mail to import mailboxes created by Eudora Mailbox Cleaner properly. Either they wouldn't show up at all or they would show up nested with two copies of the mailbox, for example MailboxQQ had messages in it as well as subfolder MailboxQQ/Messages with a duplicate copy of the mail.


So for me, going from Eudora to Lion Apple Mail I had to do the following:

Eudora->Eudora Mailbox Cleaner->Apple Mail (on 10.6) then copy the files over to the Lion machine and let Apple Mail (on 10.7) import the 10.6 Apple Mail Mailboxes into it's new 'V2' mailbox format.


So good luck. A perfect migration is possible, it just takes some work.

Nov 10, 2013 11:45 PM in response to bonedog

Any update about importing Eudora 6.2.4 mail into Apple Mail?


How to prepare Eudora mail for it? Using Eudora Mailbox Cleaner? Compacting Eudora Mailboxes BEFORE importing? How to fix corrupt Eudora mailboxes in which text from different messages is mixed? How to delete duplicate messages inside the Eudora or Apple Mail mailboxes?


If possible, a step-by-step procedure will be most appreciated.


Is it better to use Apple mail on OS X 10.8 or OS X 10.9? Wait for OS X 10.10?


Thanks.

How to Merge Eudora into Apple Mail?

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