You will be prompted for a file to convert. Many file formats are supported, including the following:
mmdf mail files
babyl mail files
America Online mail files
LeeMail mail files
Pine mail files (both Unix and Dos)
Elm mail files
MacEMail mail files
NewsWatcher save files
Gnus save files
NN save files
cc:Mail mail files (limited support, text archives only)
vmsMail mail files (limited support, text archives only)
eWorld mail files
PC Eudora mailboxes (even with DOS eol)
Ricemail mail files (see below for some comments)
Once the selected file is converted, you will be asked for a file in which to store the converted mail. If you select an existing file, it will be either appended to or overwritten (you'll be asked which); otherwise the file will be created. The output file will be tagged as a Eudora mailbox. Dragging a file onto the MailConverter icon is equivalent to running this command on that file.
BE CAREFUL APPENDING TO OPEN MAILBOXES WHILE EUDORA IS RUNNING! Eudora's mailboxes are its own data structures; for a third party application to modify them without telling Eudora is, to some extent, asking for trouble. Unfortunately, there isn't any way to tell Eudora about such modifications. See the IMPORTANT! file for more details.
Sorry about this limitation; this may be fixable if later releases. If Eudora is not running, or if you're appending to a mailbox that Eudora has never seen, you should have no problem.
Some of these formats (eg, Pine) are already compatible with Eudora. In these cases, conversion is usually not necessary, although there are still some reasons why you might want to pass such files through the converter:
- MailConverter will change Unix and DOS end-of-line chars into Mac end-of-line chars (which Eudora demands). If you've transferred the file properly from Unix or DOS in the first place, this has already been done for you. But just in case...
- If your mail file has large messages (> 32K), Eudora will happily show you the mailbox window but won't let you open any of those big messages. MailConverter will break up such messages into Eudora-digestible chunks. But it's probably a better idea to use Eudora's spool file option instead...
- You may want to merge a folder of such files, or build an assembly (see below) which includes such files.
If you don't need to do any conversion, but you want to set the creator and type attributes of the file, use Tag File As Mailbox.
NB: Eudora only checks for attachments on incoming mail from the POP server or local spool file. If you wish to convert a mail file with attachments in it, you must use the spool-file option after conversion if you want to get at the attachment.
Convert Folder
You will be prompted for a folder (only folders will show up in the dialog). Each file in the given folder will be converted as with Convert File, each subfolder in the given folder will be converted as with Merge Folder (see below).
Merge Folder
The files in the folder will be converted, as in Convert Folder, but the merged output will go to a single output file. You'll be asked to select the output file before any conversion begins. Dragging a folder onto the MailConverter icon is equivalent to running this command on that folder.
Settings…
The usual customization dialog. See below for details. By default, preferences are read from/saved to
System Folder:Preferences:MailConverter Preferences.
You can also launch MailConverter from some other settings file, in which case all changes affect that settings file rather than the default. New settings files can only be created by copying an existing settings file (at the moment).
[Note: this is different from earlier versions]
Save Settings
This will save the current settings file immediately.
Tag File as Mailbox
If you have a file that's already in Eudora-compatible format but has the wrong type and creator fields, you can use this command to set those fields without any further conversion. Dragging a file onto the MailConverter icon with the control key down is equivalent. See above for some reasons why you might want to convert a file even if it is in the proper format already.
Quit
Quit
THE WINDOWS MENU:
The items in this menu pertain to the Drop window and mailbox drops.
The Drop window and mailbox windows are used as destinations for drops. Files and folders from the Finder; text; and file "promises" (eg NewsWatcher articles by subject, and Anarchie remote files) can be dragged and dropped into these window. A dropped file or dropped text will be processed immediately. A dropped file promise (eg, what NewsWatcher provides when you drag a Subject) will be processed when (a) the file exists (b) the file is not empty and (c) the file isn't being written into by some other process. Note that some promised files may never meet these criteria, in which case you must clear the window (with the Clear command) before trying to drop anything else.
Items dropped into the Drop window will be treated just as with the Convert File or Merge Folder commands. Items dropped into a mailbox window will be appended to the end of the corresponding Eudora mailbox. Mailbox windows are created with the Open... command.
A note about file "promises": these are drags that refer not to existing files, but to files that an application will create at the time of the drop. Examples are dragging Subjects from NewsWatcher group windows or files from Anarchie windows. MailConverter, in accepting these drops, has the responsibility of telling those applications where the new file should go; it will always use the (invisible) Temporary Items folder, on the startup disk. Following standard practice, such files will always be deleted after conversion, regardless of the Delete Input After Conversion setting.
BE CAREFUL APPENDING TO OPEN MAILBOXES WHILE EUDORA IS RUNNING! Eudora's mailboxes are its own data structures; for a third party application to modify them without telling Eudora is, to some extent, asking for trouble. Unfortunately, there isn't any way to tell Eudora about such modifications. See the IMPORTANT! file for more details.
Sorry about this limitation; this may be fixable if later releases. If Eudora is not running, or if you're appending to a mailbox that Eudora has never seen, you should have no problem.
Open Mailbox Window...
Opens a mailbox drop window. You will be prompted for an existing Eudora mailbox to associate with the window.
Open Drop Window
Open the Drop Window.
Append File
Converts a file and appends the result to the current (selected) mailbox window.
Append Folder
Converts the files in a folder and appends the merged result to the current (selected) mailbox window.
Clear
Clear the contents of the currently selected window.
THE SPECIAL MENU
This menu has commands for the special header filtering that can be done on files in "generic" or sendmail format. See Header Filtering for details of that mechanism.
Header Settings:
Puts up the special settings dialog for header filtering.
Read Headers File:
Re-parses the current header-filter file (if any).
Edit Headers File:
Launches the default editor on the header-filter file (if any).
THE SETTINGS DIALOG:
Allow only TEXT files as input:
If you check this, the file dialog in Open Mailbox will only let you select TEXT files. Also, any non-TEXT files encountered in the processing or merging of a folder will be skipped. If you uncheck it, you can select anything (except folders) and all files encountered while processing or merging a folder will be converted. If you wish to convert single America Online message files, you must leave this option unchecked, since those files are generally not TEXT files. Likewise MacEMail (unread messages are not TEXT files); and in some case eWorld mail files.
This setting is unchecked by default (a change from earlier versions).
Delete input file after converting:
Self-explanatory — use with care! This is unchecked by default.
Confirm before saving:
If this is checked, for each converted file you will be prompted for an output file name which you can either confirm, correct or cancel. If this is unchecked, and if you've selected a default save folder, the output file will go in that folder with the same filename as the input file. You will not be asked for confirmation unless a file by the same name already exists in that folder.
This setting is checked by default.
Truncate Output Filename:
Check this if you want to follow the Eudora convention of a 27-char max for mailbox names.
This setting is checked by default.
Restrict Messages to 32K:
Check this if you want large messages (> 32K) to be broken up into a series of smaller messages that will be better handled by Eudora. Note that the special Eudora hack in which a broken-up message can be saved back into its original form will not work -- there's apparantly no way to force Eudora to do this unless it breaks the message up when reading it from the POP server or from a spool file. Sorry. On the other hand, you will at least be able to read the message...
My personal recommendation is that you leave this option off all the time. Mailboxes with large messages can be more thoroughly Eudorasized by passing them through Eudora's own large-message-hacking code, using the spool file option for offline mail-reading: convert the file with MailConverter without launching Eudora, then tell Eudora to treat the file as a spool file, then move the messages wherever you want them.
This setting is unchecked by default.
Send To Application:
If this is checked, newly written mailboxes will be sent to current output application immediately for display. The output application is determined by the Creator setting (see below). The "send" works by simulating a double-click on the newly created file, which means that if the application isn't running, it will be started in the default way. For instance, Eudora would be started with the standard Eudora Settings file (the one System Folder:Eudora Folder:). If you want to use some other Eudora settings, be sure to launch Eudora first.
For Eudora, in general, this option only works in the commercial version, although the freeware version will usually do the right thing if you're appending to an existing mailbox.
This setting is unchecked by default.
Default Input Folder:
Lets you specify the default source folder for files to be converted.
Default Save Folder:
Lets you specify the default destination folder for converted files. For Eudora users, this would normally be Eudora folder (wherever you put it).
Creator and File Type
These settings can be used to tag mailbox files made by MailConverter with a creator and/or file-type that's different from the standard Eudora mailbox creator ('CSOm') and file-type ('TEXT). Changing the Creator also changes the application in which the newly created mailbox files will be opened when the Send To Application setting is checked.
These settings can be changed in various ways:
- you can type directly into the fields
- you can select one of the default options (currently Eudora and Z-Mail) with radio buttons
- you can set them to be the same as some existing file by clicking the Same As... button (you will be prompted for the file)
Cancel:
This cancels any changes made to the preferences and quits the dialog.
OK:
This sets the showing preferences and quits the dialog. The settings will be saved on exit (assuming the program doesn't die an ugly death).
FINDER INTERFACE:
If a single file is dragged onto the MailConverter icon, it will be converted with the Convert File command; if a single folder is dragged onto the MailConverter icon, it will be converted with Merge Folder.
If multiple files and/or folders are dragged onto the MailConverter icon, the dragged items will be merged into one mailbox by default (ie, similar to Merge Folder). If the Command key is down at the time, each dragged item will have its own mailbox (ie, similar to Convert File).
If the control key is down at the time of the drag, all dragged files will be tagged rather than converted (see Tag File As Mailbox, above).
READING A NEWLY CREATED MAILBOX IN EUDORA:
If you're using the commercial version of Eudora, reading a newly created mailbox is simple: just double-click on it, or use the "Other…" menu choice in the Mailbox menu. The mailbox can reside anywhere, and the table-of-contents will be generated as needed. The only restriction is that the mailbox filename be 27 characters or less (an option in MailConverter will enforce this restriction). NEW: you can now also send the new mailbox directly to Eudora (if it's running) from MailConverter.
Freeware Eudora is less friendly. In this case, the mailbox must reside in your Eudora folder, and it must be there at the time Eudora is started — it can't be added while Eudora is running as near as I can tell. Double-clicking on a mailbox in freeware Eudora will only work once its corresponding table-of-contents file has been generated by selecting it from the Eudora mailbox menu. The new Send-To-Eudora option does not work with the freeware version unless you're appending to an existing mailbox.
IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT BIG MESSAGES
Eudora dislikes messages that are larger than 32K. When it reads from a POP server, it will automatically break such messages up into chunks of 32K or less. If you have the appropriate setting checked, MailConverter attempts to do the same thing, to the extent that it can.
There are two things to look out for if you plan to convert large messages. First, it's essential that the message be properly formatted — otherwise the heuristic used by MailConverter to find the end of the header block will fail. Ordinarily, when used on genuine mail files or saved news articles, you should have no problem. Second, the duplicated headers will significantly increase the buffer requirements (see the note on memory use in the Read Me) and you may encounter a buffer-overflow error. For now, there's nothing much you can do if this should happen (sorry). Eventually Qualcomm will realize that the 32K message limit is ridiculous and this whole problem will disappear…
For now, I would recommend not using this MailConverter option at all.
IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT DRAG&DROP FROM NEWSWATCHER
NewsWatcher's Save Threads To Separate Files option will not work properly when dragging articles to MailConverter, for the simple reason that NewsWatcher tells it only about the first file, not about the subsequent ones. You must disable this option if you want to drag multiple articles (from multiple threads) directly to MailConverter. If you really want this option on, you'll have to drag to the Finder first and then drag the resulting files. Nothing to be done here, I'm afraid, since NW is making files behind MCV's back.
FORMAT COMMENTS:
1. Ricemail: MailConverter depends on the current file structure used by Ricemail. Some very old versions (pre-1992) have a different format. The best thing to do if you have notebooks made by one of these early versions is to update them with a newer version (eg, by creating a new notebook and using MOVEALL to move all the old messages into it).
If you're unable to do this, you can get reasonable conversion with the "generic" converter by specifying the following Header Settings:
Separator Length: 72
Separator Character: =
No Blankline Before: on
Bo Blankline After: on
2. Aol: There's one form of AOL date which is very slightly different from what Eudora expects, but which is not (yet) handled by MailConverter. In this case, the date that appears in the mailbox window will look confused, even though the date in the message itself will appear to be fine. I'll try to handle this at some point.
EXAMPLES OF USE:
1. >Matti Haveri <mhaveri@cc.oulu.fi>: NewsWatcher's message(s) can be saved or appended to a file (cmd–s or cmd–d). MailConverter can convert and filter these NewsWatcher save-files to Eudora mailboxes which can then be browsed and archived in Eudora. If there are many messages then browsing is done faster and easier with EasyView's Internet Mail-mode — EasyView allows clipping of interesting articles to a new file which can then be imported directly to Eudora.
This way the saved messages are a lot more readable and the archive is smaller (unnecessary long headers filtered out) compared to the redirect-to-self-approach with NewsWatcher.
2. Digests like "Info-Mac Digest" can be converted to mailboxes so that replying is easier. In Eudora, select a message that's a digest. Save as…, with headers but without "guessing paragraphs". Convert the resulting file. The final mailbox will be the burst version of the digest.
Digests which follow the official rfc structure (info-mac is not an example) should be saved without headers, so as not to fool MailConverter into thinking it's in "generic" format. Digests in true rfc format will have a line something like this at or near the top of the message: ------- start of digest (x messages) (RFC 934 encapsulation) ------- where x is the number of messages in the digest.
3. Automatic NewsWatcher --> Eudora scheme for those with the Drag Manager:
In advance: put a copy of MailConverter on your desktop, and select the following settings:
Confirm before saving - off
Truncate Output Filename - on
Send To Eudora - on
- Start Eudora.
- Drag an article or articles (by Subject) from NewsWatcher to the Drop Window.
That's it! If you have commercial Eudora, you'll see the article or articles in a Eudora mailbox. Digests like info-mac will be burst into separate messages.
4. Converting files on a remote host -- just drag from an Anarchie window directly into one of MailConverter's windows! What could be easier...
