Email Magician for Eudora (Macintosh) provides a one-button solution to managing your email.
Email Magician automatically creates filters, mailboxes, and nicknames with one click. You can create one filter or a thousand filters with a single press of the "Make Filters & Boxes" button. Email Magician automatically creates the new mailboxes to go with your new filters and, if you desire it, Email Magician creates new nicknames in your address book for the addresses or subjects pertaining to your new filters and mailboxes.
The first time you launch Email Magician
The first time you launch Email Magician, it will ask for the location of your Eudora Folder (it doesn't need to be called "Eudora Folder" but it does have to be a valid Eudora Folder -- Email Mail Magician will check).
Also, on the first launch, the program will display the help screens. This is a 23-step illustrated tutorial. You should read that information; it won't take long. You can return to help screens at any time by pressing command-H, or by selecting Help from one of the menus. There are some buttons on the Help screens that provide more in-depth explanations and more tips.
The easiest way to learn Email Magician is to use the Email Magician Setup Assistant (available from the Help menu at the far right of all the program's menus). The Setup Assistant has been designed to teach you the program while you configure it.
Every time you launch Email Magician, it will scan your Eudora folder for Filters, Mailboxes, and Nicknames.
Safety
Just to reassure you, Email Magician doesn't make any changes to the contents of your Eudora folder until you press the "Accept" button (after having generated filters, mailboxes, and/or nicknames, or set up Urgent filters or spam filters). Even then, any files that Email Magician actually "touches" (changes) are backed up in the "EMM Backups" folder inside your Email Magician folder. Plus, you can revert everything afterwards. Even if you miss your normal reversion options, you can always revert your filter file to the state it was in the last time you launched the software (see the last item under the Options menu).
Mailboxes are not included in the automatic backups because Email Magician never really touches the contents of mailboxes (except when registered users take advantage of the archive messages option on the Maintenance screen). You can use Email Magician to move mailboxes to the trash (or to various archive folders), or even rename them. It's easy to retrieve a mailbox from the trash or from an archive folder. Filter files and address books are quite small so that's why they are backed up (also because Email Magician might have altered their contents at your request). If Email Magician alters your Eudora Settings file, whatever you have named it, the settings file is first automatically backed up in the EMM Backups folder.
Some Tips:
The seven most important tips are:
1) Read all the help screens and click their tip buttons (if any) that appeared the first time you launched Email Magician, and that are available thereafter by selecting "Help" from one of the menus or pressing Command-H.
2) Use the Email Magician Setup Assistant, available from the Apple menu and also the Help menu at the far right of Email Magician's menus. It has been designed to teach you most of what you need to know about Email Magician while you configure the program. Please access the Setup Assistant's 37 screens sequentially, at least the first time you use it.
3) Read the help text that appears in red when you move your cursor over any object. This gives you immediate feedback and is meant to take the place of having to look things up in a manual.
4) Familiarize yourself with the various screens of the Preferences window.
5) Open all the "latches" you see on the various screens to see what they reveal.
6) Read the special Help text for the Urgent Filters. Click on the Help button (question mark) that appears after you open the Urgent Filter editor.
7) Read these tips to the very end.
Try using the defaults
If you generate too many filters then set the threshold to 4 or more.
If you generate too few filters, then select "Same Subject and Email Address" from the Configuration panel.
Explore the Preferences
There is a "Simplify Interface" checkbox on the General Preferences screen that will remove several menus if you don't need them. For many people Email Magician can be run very effectively without ever even opening any of the "Latches."
Deleting New Mailboxes automatically deletes New Filters
Check the New Mailboxes field for names of new mailboxes that alert you to superfluous boxes. Deleting the individual boxes from the New Mailboxes field (for example, by double-clicking with the option-key pressed), will remove corresponding filters from the New Filters list. This is a quick way to edit down a large number of generated filters.
Generate filters in batches, as follows
After generating a number of filters with an initial setting based upon matching email addresses, open Eudora and apply those filters. Then return to Email Magician, rescan your Eudora Folder, and change the configuration to one that is based upon matching subjects (leave the search text field blank), or one that looks for special text in the subject header (enter something in the subject search text field). Then generate another bunch of filters. Only click the "Spam Filter" box when you are generating your last batch of filters. At that time, you might want to consider generating some Urgent filters as well (see below).
Email Magician generates many filters and mailboxes so you may want to open the Eudora Settings (under the Special menu in Eudora) and go to the "Getting Attention" pane, and uncheck "Open Mailbox." Then edit individual filters in Eudora or Email Magician by adding an "Open mailbox" action for the ones you want to open automatically.
In between generating batches of filters, but after manually applying new filters, return to Email Magician's Maintenance window and delete all empty boxes and filters targeting missing books. The reason for this approach is that you may discover some filters that Email Magician has generated take precedence over others generated by the program, meaning that some generated mailboxes may always remain empty and some filters may never be used.
Use Email Magician Periodically
Use Email Magician every week or every day... or whenever your Inbox or Outbox becomes full (according to your definition of the word "full" in this context).
You can be selective
If you click the middle latch you will discover several other options you can check or uncheck:
• Other Boxes: Lets you choose additional mailboxes to examine for possible filters, mailboxes, and/or nicknames.
• Nicknames: When checked prior to pressing the Make Filter & Boxes button, will generate new nicknames. When unchecked prior to pressing the Accept button, will not write these new nicknames to your Eudora folder.
• Spam Filters: When checked, will add the spam filters to your filter file (press the edit button next to this check box to edit your spam filters). This option is for registered users only.
• Urgent Filters: When checked, will add the urgent filters in front of your filter file (press the edit button next to this check box to edit your urgent filters). Although you can play with this option (and preview urgent filters) in unregistered copies of Email Magician, you must be registered to actually write these filters to your filter file.
• Special Filters: When checked, provides access to another seven types of filters: filters for entire addressbooks, for HTML documents, for mail with PC-file attachements, for valid and invalid addresses, and for your History List.
There are short cuts to selecting and de-selecting these options found under the Options menu.
For example, if you decided you want to write only urgent filters after having generated filters, mailboxes, and nicknames, the long way of doing this (5 clicks) would be to select "Clear New Filters" from the Options menu, then uncheck the Nicknames and Spam Filters checkboxes, checking only the Urgent Filters box checkbox. Then press the "Accept" button. Alternatively, selecting "Only Urgent Filters" from the Options menu takes care of all of this with a single click.
Use the Maintenance Window
Because Email Magician is over cautious in generating filters and boxes, it may turn out that one filter created by the program catches items that would otherwise be caught by another filter (further down the filter list). This can lead to some of the Email Magician filters and boxes ending up being unused. You can clean your Eudora folder of all these unused items -- as well as unused filters or boxes you may have created earlier -- by selecting "Cleanup Eudora Folder..." from the "Options" menu, or "Maintenance" from the "Windows" menu.
The Maintenance window provides various "housekeeping" options for your Eudora folder, such as deleting empty mailboxes, deleting filters targeting empty mailboxes, and deleting filters targeting missing mailboxes.
Experiment
With Email Magician it is so easy to quickly make filters and delete filters that you should try many different configurations. For example, if you find that spam is still getting through, don't hesitate to strip all your spam filters (using Strip Spam Filters under the Special menu), and merge all the spam filters into pre-filters using the Spam and Urgent Filtering screen of the Preferences window.
Spam Filter Maker
The Spam Filter Maker is available to registered users of Email Magician. Press the Edit button next to the Spam Filters checkbox that is revealed when you click the middle latch. You can also access the Spam Filter Maker by selecting Edit Spam Filters from the Special menu.
The operation of the Spam Filter Maker is relatively obvious. You can enter one or two match items per line. If you enter more than one item, these must be separated by an <OR>, <AND>, or <UNLESS>.
"OR" filters trigger if either of the conditions are met. "AND" filters trigger if both the conditions are met. "UNLESS" filters trigger if the first condition is met and the second one is not met.
Although the spam filters are divided into Pre-Filters and Post-Filters, you can specify that these should be merged by selecting that option in the Preferences. Once you have decided to merge the Pre-Filters with the Post-Filters, you should decide whether to treat the entire block of spam filters as a Pre-Filter (i.e., executing before your other filters), or as a Post-Filter (i.e., executing after your other filters).
As with the Urgent Filters (described below), you can end a line containing two conditions with the "ß" character (made by pressing option-S which is ALT-S on some keyboards). This will force the second word or phrase to be searched for in the body of the message, regardless of what the overall setting is for that block of filters. Good for "AND"ing a body condition to a subject condition.
Precede a line with the word "possible" in parentheses -- (possible) -- to force that filter to target a special "EMM Possible Spam" mailbox.
Remember that filters execute sequentially. This knowledge should lead you to a certain decision regarding spam prefiltering or postfiltering depending upon your individual situation. This is also the reason for the Demote and Promote buttons on the Filter Info palettes. Demote places the current filter at the end of that filter block. Promote places the current filter at the beginning of that filter block.
Shortcuts for the Spam Filters window
Press the "Default" button with the optionkey to capture the current Spam Filter Definitions as your personal default. Then you can press the Default button whenever you want to recall those defaults.
Press the "Default" button with the commandkey to restore the factory defaults to the Spam Filter Maker.
Press the "Import" button to import a file of Spam Definitions.
Press the "Export" button to save the current Definitions to a file. You can edit this file with any word processor (including SimpleText, which comes with every Macintosh"). Save a file to examine the structure while comparing it to what is in the Spam Filters window. You will see that each settable item is separated from the next by a return followed by %%% followed by a return. If you make a file that conforms to this, it can be imported into the Spam Filter Maker.
There is an example of an EMM Spam Definition file in the "Other Documentation" folder that comes with Email Magician.
Urgent Filter Maker
Urgent Filters are constructed from phrase and addresses you jot down on a sort of "note-pad" that pops up when you click on the Edit button next to the Urgent filters check box (or select Edit Urgent Filters from the Special menu). The purpose of Urgent Filters is to redirect into a single box, urgent "to do" items that would otherwise end up scattered around in other boxes or even unfiltered. Urgent Filters were designed to be somewhat temporary, but there are many cases in which you might want to keep some of them in place permanently. To make sure they are not deleted during a purge of Urgent Filters, you may want to rename the ones you would like to be permanent.
Urgent Filters will not be discussed in great detail here because they have their own little help screen -- click the question mark at the upper right of the main window when you are looking at the Urgent Filter "note-pad." Click the question mark again, or click on the help field itself, to dismiss the help text.
There is an Urgent Filters "preview" button next to the help button at the upper right. It looks like an eye. You should memorize the effects of various Urgent filter entries (it helps to inspect them with the preview option). The Urgent Filter constructor behaves differently depending upon whether you jot down phrases (or words) or email addresses. And whether you separate two of these (or one of each) with a comma. The logic behind this is easy to follow if you read the Urgent Filters help and experiment.
Note that you can also use <OR>, <AND>, and <UNLESS> (or <NOT>) with Urgent Filters, just like with the spam filters.
Special Filter Maker
Email Magician provides for a 7 types of Special Filters and allows for the free placement of these filters. These filters are all "Incoming" filters, with the exception of the "Intersects Nicknames" filters which includes "Outgoing" messages as well. This lets you manually filter these messages (using command-J) as a second stage precaution against misfiltered messages.
It follows that placement of these filters is crucial. Press the "default" bottom to see recommended placements.
Note that existing Special Filters are stripped from your filters file before new ones are added so it is possible to "fine tune" the location of these filters by pressing the "Accept" button with only the "Special Filters" checkbox checked, after changing locations of the filters by way of each filter's location popup menu.
1) Exclude Addressbooks: This filter stops filter processing when it encounters a message from anyone in your addressbooks.
2) ! or $ in subject header: This allows you to treat such messages as spam if you wish. It is a good idea to place this after all other filters as legitimate message subjects may also contain this punctuation.
3) HTML messages filter: Much spam arrives in HTML format. However, legitimate messages mail also be in HTML format. Because of this, there is an "exceptions field. Email addresses exclude messages "from:" that address, lines in quotes exclude messages with that "subject:", and other text is treated as "Any Header" exclusions. Enter "Nicknames" or "Addressbooks" in this field to exclude anyone in your addressbooks from these filters. Enter only one exclusion per line.
4) PC Attachment filters: These move any file attachments with PC file extensions (useless on a Macintosh) to a designate folder. An obvious candidate is "EXE" files. You may enter additional extensions in this field.
5) Intersects Nicknames: These filters move all incoming or outgoing mail from specified addressbooks to a mailbox named after that addressbook.
6) Valid Accounts filter: This filter lets you catch all mail addressed to an invalid account.
7) History List filters: This option has Email Magician construct filters, nicknames, and boxes (selectively) from your Eudora History List (kept in the bottom of your addressbooks).
After All Flag, Before All Flag
You can designate certain filters to be run after or before all others by setting their "Flags" in either the Filter Info palette for your current filters or in the New Filter Info palette for filters that you just generated with Email Magician.
Another way to force certain filters to run last is to go to the second Preferences screen -- "Special Handling" -- and list email addresses or phrases that will identify filters that should be placed at the very end of the filter list.
Archival Options
Archiving Mailboxes
Email Magician includes some very powerful options to archive your mailboxes. These features aren't obvious from a cursory glance at the program.
Archival options are concerned with your Existing Mailboxes. Double-clicking on a mailbox name in the Existing Mailboxes field will open the Mailbox Info palette. From there, your can set up a group of archive folders and send mailboxes away for storage. Any folders you choose for archiving here, also appear in the archival options of the Preferences window.
In the archival options of the Preferences window, you can designate a default archival folder. This comes into play when you double-click on an Existing mailbox while pressing the shift key and the option key and the command key simultaneously.
Notice that the archival options in the Preferences window let you specify that an alias to the archived box be retained, either at the original location of the box (in which case, you will see it just like any other box when you launch Eudora), or within a single folder in which are gathered all the aliases of the archived boxes. You have the option to display these boxes or hide them as well (although aliases will always display in Eudora).
You probably would not want to select any of the aliasing options if you are using off-line storage for your Eudora archives (such as removable media). This is because you might inadvertently run a search in Eudora that involved the off-line boxes and Eudora would take a good deal of time trying to locate them.
Archiving is also available from the Maintenance window. There, you can archive mailboxes that haven't been modified in a specified time-period.
Archiving Messages
From the Maintenance window you can also archive messages in boxes that exceed a specified limit number of messages. These will be collected in mailboxes in your default archive folder as well. The difference between these message-archives, as opposed to the mailbox-archives is that boxes archiving messages on a continual basis have the extension ".arc" whereas when an entier mailbox is moved to the archive folder, there is no reason to alter its name.
When you archive individual messages this way (by way of the Archive Messages option in the Maintenance window) the status of the messages will all be reset to "unread." We plan to retain message status in archived messages in a future release. If it is absolutely essential for you to retain the message status information, we suggest using the archive mailboxes options instead of the archive message options.
Exporting to FileMaker™
Email Magician will export any mailbox to a FileMaker database. Use the "Export" button on the "Existing Mailbox Info" palette. You can quickly export mailboxes from the "Existing Mailbox" field by double-clicking them with the Shift and Command keys pressed. You will be given the option to strip html from the exported messages. Email Magician will export 20 to 80 mailboxes per second, depending upon the message size and whether or not "strip html" is enabled (and your computer's speed).
To import the resulting files into FileMaker, select "Tab-separated Text File" as the import format. The field order is:
To:
From:
Date:
Subject:
Message Body
Unregistered users can export only the first 50 messages of each mailbox.
Expert Mode
Once you have used Email Magician enough to so that the filters, boxes, and nicknames it generates require no editing from within Email Magician, you may wish to turn on "expert mode." On the first screen of the Preferences window ("General Preferences") check the box named "Use “Expert” Menu." This will insert a menu that replances many difference combinations of actions with a single menu item. Further, Expert mode suppresses all (or most) of the dialog boxes that might pop up during the "making" process or "accepting" process. Use expert mode with care, only when you are quite familiar with Email Magician and the results it produces.
Multiple Users
Email Magician supports multiple Eudora folders. You can choose another Eudora folder from the Locations menu, by clicking on the Filter File field (directly under the words "Current Filters" at the upper left of the main window), or by pressing the Add buton on the Multiple Users screen of the Preferences window.
If you are using Email Magician with multiple Eudora folders, you will probably want to check the checkbox "Configure Email Magician for multiple users" found on the Muliple Users screen of the Preferences window. This will place a small popup menu next to the Filter File field at the upper right of the main screen. The popup menu will allow you to quickly switch between different user profiles, each with a different Eudora folder.
Further, you will may want to save different default archive locations, and so forth, for each Eudora Folder you are processing with Email Magician. These are stored with each profile, along with each of the other folder and boxes accessible by way of the "Locations" menu.
Miscellaneous Notes
Edits to Existing Nicknames are not written to your address books until you press the "Accept" button. The untouched address book is backed up before any changes are made.
If you are displaying filter counts, you should keep aware of the fact that Urgent Filters and Spam Filters are not figured into the counts.
The Filter Info and New Filter Info palettes are mainly for the display of information in this version of Email Magician. You can designate filters as After All and promote or demote their execution position, as well as deleting them. However, if you try to edit any of their parameters on the palette, you will only be able to rename or redirect them.
The "Automatic Update" checkbox in the Statistics window forces an update of all statistics whenever a new Eudora folder is scanned or when the Statistics window is opened. Also, a partical update (only the items that are quick to update) will be done whenever the "Make Filters & Boxes" button is pressed and whenever the "Accept"' button is pressed. If you have an extremely large Eudora folder, you may wish to keep this option unchecked. You can press "Update Now" whenever you want.
In the Statistics window, counts for current filters, filters made, filters accepted, and new filters do NOT include spam filters.
There are three ways to change fonts in Email Magician and two-byte fonts are supported (optimally you can use Apple's Text Services Manager so that you can input two-byte fonts inline and bottomline rather than by way of a floating window). You can set the fonts for the four spam definition fields of the Spam Filter Maker by way of popup menus at the upper right of the fields. This is to allow some filters to be be based on 2-byte fonts. You can set fonts in the Log window by way of the Font menu in the menu bar. Finally, you can set the fonts of all other fields with the font popup menu on the "General Preferences" screen in the Preferences window.
Registration Matters
Unregistered Versions
Unregistered copies of Email Magician will on allow you to "Accept" filters once per 24-hour period -- only write one filter (of each type), one mailbox, and one nickname per day. This means, one new filter, one spam pre-filter for each field, one spam post-filter for each field, one each of the two special spam filter types at the bottom of the spam filter maker, 4 spammer address filters, one urgent filter, and one of each of the 7 special filters (7 total plus 2 extra html filters). This is a grand total of 20 filters per day for unregistered versions..
How to Register
This is how you get a registration code. Once you have paid Kagi for Email Magician, either online or via the "Register" application included with Email Magician, send YAV the "Challenge Phrase" you will find in the Registration dialog box (there are menu items and buttons all over the program to take you there). It will speed things up if you include your Challenge Phrase as a comment when you register (see the instructions in the Registration dialog box). Another quick way to send your Challenge Phrase to YAV is by selecting "Turbo Registration..." from the Apple menu or elsewhere.
Include your name and email address to which the registration code should be sent, and you will be receive a registration code within 24 hours (maybe longer if it's a weekend). Once you enter the registration code, the program will be unlocked (for the computer upon which you registered it). You will be able to make as many filters as you like, whenever you want. And, you will be able to use the Spam filters options and the Urgent filters options.
Note: You can copy the Challenge phrase to the clipboard by clicking on it (as indicated in the registration dialog).
If you select "Register" or "Turbo Registration" in Email Magician, while your registration information on the clipboard (as supplied in the email you receive from YAV), Email Magician will automatically register itself! No typing will be necessary.
Some Technical Info
Memory requirements
Email Magician needs more memory to process larger mailboxes. It is currently set to 24,064 bytes and can process about 7,000 messages at a time, yielding circa 10,000 candidates to match for filters. If you experience a crash, it is most likely a memory problem. You have two choices: You can increase the memory partition for Email Magician using "Get Info" in the Finder. Alternatively, process fewer boxes at a time, or set the "1000 message per box limit" in the Preferences. The other reason you might crash is because you don't have enough disk space left for Email Magician to make its temporary files and your backup files.
(In)Accuracy of the reduction estimates
Most of the Email Magician's statements of the sort "by at least nn messages" are inaccurate. A simple example will reveal the reason this is true:
Imagine you have Email Magician scan a mailbox consisting of 100 messages. Your match conditions are a threshold of 5 messages from the same email address. But the box has 60 messages from the same email address and the rest of the addresses are unique. Email Magician will make 1 filter and report that this will "reduce the size of the selected mailbox (100 messages) by at least 5 messages" when, in fact, that filter will reduce the size of the original mailbox by 60 messages. This is because, to save processing time, Email Magician moves onto the next candidate once it finds an address that meets the threshold requirements (5 in this example).
Additionally, the total message count of your boxes may be incorrect if you haven't compacted the boxes. To compact an individual box (in Eudora), click on the numbers in the lower left corner with the shift key pressed. To compact all your boxes, click the numbers with the option key pressed.
Keyboard Shortcuts
You should commit these shortcuts to memory.
Certain keyboard shortcuts in the Current Filters, New Filters, Existing Mailboxes, New Mailboxes, Existing Nicknames, and New Nicknames field are consistent with one another.
For all the fields:
Double-clicking opens an info palette about the item you click upon.
Double-clicking with the option key deletes the item.
Double-clicking with the command key renames the item.
For Current and New filters:
Double-clicking with the shift key and option key redirects the filter to the trash.
Double-clicking with the shift key and the command key lets you redirect that filter to another mailbox.
For the Existing Mailboxes field:
Double-clicking with the shift key and the option key opens the clicked -on mailbox in Eudora, opening Eudora as well, if necessary.
Double-clicking with the shift key, option key, and command key archives that box to the default archive folder (which you can set in the "Archiving" screen of the Preferences window).
For other scrolling fields
Double-clicking with or without the option or command keys in many of Email Magician's scrolling fields will execute a shortcut. You are advised to examine the red help text while the cursor arrow is hovering over a field for more information.
Most of the frequently used menu items have command keys as well. In fact, all 26 letters have been used, as well as the equals sign (which takes you to the preferences).
Launch Email Magician with the optionkey pressed to bypass reading the preferences file.
Launch EMail Magician with the commandkey (Apple key) pressed to completely reset Email Magician (you will have to re-enter your registration code) and erase the preferences file (a backup copy is retained in your "EMM Backups" folder).
Troubleshooting
If you find that Email Magician has created a filter that transfers messages to an unintended mailbox you will want to identify which filter caused this to happen. To do this, first make sure the Filters window in Eudora is closed. Next select the message you are curious about in the mailbox contents window, and then press the shift-key and select "Filters" from the "Windows" menu. The Filters window will open with the filter that acted upon that message, selected.
If you find that Email Magician makes a box that intercepts a large portion of your email it may be because you are using an alias provided by your ISP and all your incoming mail include your "actual" address in one of the headers. This is a very normal situation. There are two solutions:
1) In Preferences -> Special Handling, specify this "actual addresss" as one never to make a filter for (don't forget to check the checkbox above the field).
2) Set this address as one of the primary users (who are automatically unfiltered) when you make filters. This is done by clicking the "Make Filters and Boxes" button while pressing the option key.
If you have already inadvertently made a filter like the described above, don't forget to delete that filter, move its destination mailbox contents back into your inbox, and press command-J to refilter those messages to their correct destinations (assuming you have manual-filtering enabled).
Remember that Eudora needs extra time for filtering, proportionate to the number of filters you have.
Eudora also needs room for temporary files on its partition. A lack of appropriate space can cause a large filtering task to abort.
Contact information
You can send general inquiries to:
YAV@kagi.com
-or-
EmailMagician@yav.com
We welcome your suggestions for future versions of Email Magician. Upgrades to registered users are free of charge.
