Forum Moderators: phranque
I really need a good email program. I am looking at Eudora 6.1. Any other suggestions?
It does the job though and thats what I was looking for.
[ritlabs.com...]
Not free, but a very nice product. You can download a time-limited demo and try it out.
I really didn't think it would be such a big deal. All I wanted to do was some routine housekeeping. My reasons were two fold. I could see that the amount of e-mails stacking up would have to be dealt with. Secondly, I still believe that there is no reason to keep stuff I'm not using on the hard drive, especially stuff that is frittered around in dribs and drabs. It's probably making lousy use of my cluster size.
It always starts the same way, you start out with a fresh drive, and e-mails start to arrive. You notice that you're getting e-mail buildup and you start to delete. Then you remember to delete the deleted. Outlook Express has its' very own version of the recycle bin. You find that at "Tools" then "Options" then "Maintenance" you can set the deleted to actually delete on exit. If your garage looks like mine, your Outlook Express probably does too. You quickly learn that just when you do delete the questionable ones, you need a reference that you just told the Hard Disk it could overwrite. So, you start saving more of them.
The answer seemed so simple. Floppies. Imation has some diskettes that are in translucent shades of Neon. I figured I could leave them laying around and achieve the "look" with out having to say "G3". I rarely use the little darlin's because our software writers are all in a competition to see who can write the biggest Octopus to consume drive space. I know this is way off subject. One of the reasons I have NeoTrace on the link page, is that not only is it a very nice tracing package, its' file size is kept to floppy size by design. They deserve credit for maintaining the standard.
Even with my digression, I know you're with me. I could just take 1.3 meg chunks of old e-mail and copy it to a floppy. If I ever needed the archived files, no problem, just boot "A:" and have a look-see. Things started to get complicated. If you try to "move" the selected e-mails, by highlighting them in Outlook Express and dragging them to "A" drive in an open Explorer window, the system uses the "subject" as the file name. That's no good. You would have to rename all the e-mails that have the same "subject". So off I go to Explorer to move the files. Hmmm...
For the record, the machine is running Windows 98SE with IE 5.01, all updates and Outlook Express 5 as the mail client. My reference book shows 98 to be similar, but the file extensions will be a bit different. I am only guessing, but 95 may be very similar. I doubt it has the improved version. If any one has trouble sleeping and would like to verify that OS, or Win2K, drop me a note and I will update this page. The Jolt's on me.
So, where are these files? Pack a lunch. Go to "C:\ Windows \ Application Data \ Identities \ {********-****-****-****-************} \ Microsoft \ Outlook Express". You can see by the path that, each one of us has a unique address. Or several. This machine has eight files in the "Identities" folder. I have four Identities in Outlook Express the program. We are about to go down the rabbit hole. With a little bit of trial and error you will be able to match up the Identity file in Explorer with the Identity you want to work with in Outlook Express the program. Assuming of course, you have some reason to. If you look over the files in Explorer, you see that they carry a dbx extension. The largest of these, is probably the data file for the e-mail you want to archive. Now is a good time to see how big the files are. If they exceed your storage media, we have a little work to do. Yes, we could just deal with a CD-RW or a Zip drive, but I will assume a floppy. That way you can get a handle on what is going on here. I mentioned earlier that 98 should be different. You may see mbx extensions. If so, there should also be ibx extensions. The mbx should be data and the ibx are the indices for those data files. They should correlate.
This exercise may not be as futile as it appears. Let's go back and open Outlook Express. Microsoft has provided a means to organize our e-mails. You can make folders and put e-mails in them. If you have your "View" set to show "Folders" and you probably do, you will see the directory tree starting with "Outlook Express > Local Folders > Inbox or Outbox or Sent Items" or the other usual suspects. To add folders to organize the e-mails, hit the "File" button at the top left hand corner of the screen. A little wizzie dialog box will appear. Seems straight forward enough.
This is where a word of caution is in order. Take your time here. Or you will be on the other side of the looking glass. Those are words learned the hard way. In doing the research to dig out of the mess that can happen, I found that this is an issue. My assumption is that it will be corrected...someday. Either that or we all will be taking a new look at Eudora. My guess is e-mail use will grow, not dwindle. But right now. Today. This system is on a majority of machines. So we have to be aware of it.
Again give some thought as to how you want to arrange your new folders. Specifically, write down what you want to name them. I decided to make a new folder in "Inbox" named "Archived Mail" and under that, or "in that" as MS states, folders named according to date ranges,"7/16/00 thru 7/31/00" and "8/1/00 thru 8/15/00" for example. After the new folders are made, normal techniques can be used to move the e-mail into them. You can just highlight them and drag them over. It may have been a while since you have had to highlight or select a group of files. The method is to highlight a file on one end of a string and then hold down a shift key while you move the cursor to the file on the other end of the group.
This must be important because Microsoft has also included a "move" feature in the "edit" button menu at the top of the screen. They have also provided a simple way to move the destination folder for the e-mail data, it is found by clicking the "Tools" button at the top of the Outlook Express screen and then "Options" then the "Maintenance" tab, there you will find a button called "Store Folder". The implication here is that this is a work in progress.
Here is the problem. The folders you are working with are not folders like those you have known. You cannot use any tricks to rename and shuffle contents. Follow the instructions as they are. These folders are actually the indices for the dbx data files. These folders can get a little buggy and disappear if you misstep in the renaming process. That is why the safest method is to only name the folder the first time. The bright spot is that, if you do at some point loose a "folder" in the Outlook Express program, you probably have not actually lost the data. It is probably still on the drive in the dbx files. I know my conspiracy friends' ears are perking up.
This may also help those of you that do your spring-cleaning by wiping the drive and reloading from disk. Now you can keep your e-mails and reinstall them. Not so futile after all.
So if you want to remove the old mail from your system but have it available in the future, make any changes to the folder directory in Outlook Express and proceed down the path in Explorer to the correct Identity and copy the files to what you like.Now you can delete that dbx file in Explorer. The folder will still be in Outlook Express. It needs to be. If you select that folder your view should show only "There are no items in this view". On the versions that utilize the ibx and mbx extensions if you copy them to other media, you better make sure you take the matching pairs.
To reinstall, just copy the dbx file back to the appropriate "Identity" folder in Explorer. Done deal. If any of you have lost your "folder" in the program and still have the dbx file, drop me a note and I will get you the information you need to build the old "folder". You can verify, with enough coffee, what is in the dbx file by opening it with Wordpad. The easiest method to get an "open with" option is to highlight the file in Explorer and Right Click it. "Open with" will be on the menu that pops up, click that and there you are.
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I am having a lot of problem with Eudora since I downloaded it this morning. It does not let me configure ANYTHING. It keeps on prompting me "Enter positive integer" even when I was just looking through the "tabs" in the account management. This alone is enough for me to NOT consider using it because changing email program is an important task for me. I receive 50 to 150 emails + junk daily and once I change the program, I cannot switch backandforth between programs just to test it out.
Another thing I found weird is, the email backup file in Outlook is 135 megs, and when I import the pst file to Thunderbird, the mbox folder is only 45 megs. That's some very lousy compression Outlook has got there.
jb
