In a comment on another Hawk Wings post, Dave asks how to switch his email over from Eudora for Windows to Mail.app.

The answer is easy (especially as Andreas Amann, the developer of Eudora Mailbox Cleaner has already written out the answer):

1. Copy your Windows Eudora data folder onto a USB stick or something similar so that you can move it to your Mac.
2. [UPDATE: It emerges that there is an imtermediate step in here, too complicated to make into a bullet point but not complicated enough to make the process difficult. Details in EMC's readme file - Thanks, Dave].
3. Drop the complete Eudora data folder onto Eudora Mailbox Cleaner and wait for the conversion to finish.

Eudora Mailbox Cleaner also offers easy transitions from Thunderbird (Mac, Windows or Linux):

It’s freeware (donations from grateful users not turned away) and available from Andreas’ web site .

[Thanks, Andreas :)]

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• Emailchemy: Converting or Recovering old emails
• Eudora Mailbox Cleaner 4.6.1: Slicker and Quicker
• Thunderbird and Mail.app compared
• Full Marks for Eudora Mailbox Cleaner
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Qualcomm has announced that future versions of its email client Eudora will be open-source, and provides more details on the development in a FAQ.

The company is in discussion with the Mozilla Foundation, hoping to base future Windows and Mac versions of Eudora on Thunderbird’s code. It expects that the open-source Eudora will be available sometime in the first half of 2007.

Eudora was once one of the most popular Mac email clients. Back when I was using Pegasus Mail on a 286, many Macheads were enjoying the power and flexibility of Eudora.

According to MacWorld, the original developer of Eudora Steve Dorner is pleased with the development:

Using the Mozilla Thunderbird technology platform as a basis for future versions of Eudora will provide some key infrastructure that the existing versions lacked, such as a cross-platform code base and a world-class display engine. Making it open source will bring more developers to bear on Eudora than ever before.

In the meantime Qualcomm is pushing the last commercial release of Eudora 6.2.4 for Mac out the door at the reduced price of USD 19.95 including six months of support.

[Via MacWorld after a tip-off from Bronson. Thanks!]

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Maza Digital has re-released its Email Backup app as a shareware app called Email Backup Pro.

It offers a simple schedule for the complete backup of messages and settings in Apple Mail, Thunderbird, Eudora and MS Entourage X and 2004. The shareware version adds a restore option and comes with an optional add-on to manage backups on external harddrives.

The interface clearly presents options for the location and timing of the backups and the number of backup to save:

If you want to save your backups to an external drive that is not always connected, an additional freeware app Email Backup On Mount is provided.

It watches for the mounting on the remote drive and prompts you to do a backup when it is connected. It also offers menubar access to Email Backup Pro’s main features.

The backups are compressed as zip files with the date of the backup and the extension .ebp, which helps with subsequent identification and saves space.

Restoring the backup is as easy as selecting “Restore” from the app’s Tools menu.

Email Backup Pro costs USD 9.95 and a demo version (with scheduling disabled) is available from the developer’s web site .

Documentation is not included in the download, but is available separately.

Related posts

• Email Backup Pro 1.1: Multiple client support
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• Podcast: MacNotables email client shoot-out

Email Backup, a simple and easy-to-use email backup utility that I posted about just last week, has been updated, adding support for Thunderbird and Eudora.

The app can now do backups for all the major Mac email clients, which can be selected from the main interface:

It’s not an ideal solution. Restoring one of its backups has to be done manually. It doesn’t back up some of the things that I think are essential for Mail.app.

But it’s a lot better than nothing. And it’s free.

Email Backup is available from the developer’s web site .

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• Mail Archiver X: Archive and clean your emails

Andreas Amann has updated his excellent conversion utility for Eudora, Mail.app and Thunderbird again.

The new version (4.6.1) features the following improvements and bugfixes:

1. it fixes a possible infinite loop when importing Thunderbird messages with inconsistent end-of-line characters within a single header.
2. Potential crashes due to corrupt Content-Type headers in multipart messages have been fixed.
3. It no longer produces a malformed rules file for Mail.app when importing Eudora filters based on «Label».
4. When importing mailboxes from Windows, it now removes folder/mailbox suffixes in all caps.

Andreas has also produced a chart that shows EMC’s conversion abilities:

It can convert from Eudora to Mail.app, from Eudora to Thunderbird and from Thunderbird to Mail.app. Very handy indeed.

Andreas makes this software available for free but does not refuse donations from satisfied users. You can get Eudora Mailbox Cleaner — and his excellent Mail Scripts — from his web site .

Related posts

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• Emailchemy: Converting or Recovering old emails
• An emlx to mbox converter
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In a recent MacNotables podcast, Adam Engst (TidBITS publisher), Andy Ihnatko, Dan Frakes, and Chuck Joiner discuss what they like and don’t like about their current and past email clients.

They discuss Eudora, Mail, Entourage, PowerMail, Mailsmith, Gmail, and even Elm.

The promo on the podcast’s web page reads:

Think that the choice of email clients is easy? Think again. The MacNotables ride into town on their favorite email clients and you’ll be surprised at what programs get the nod and why. Should you use the free option? Pay for a stand alone program? Use part of a productivity suite? Switch to web mail? There are no obvious answers but the panel gives you some things to consider and talk about where they would like to see email go in this bonus-length session.

The MacNotables podcast, I read on its web site , is “the podcasting home to some of the Macintosh industry’s best known and most visible personalities”.

Have a listen .

It was interesting to hear of plans to rewrite Eudora completely from the ground up. Too late, methinks, although not everyone will agree.

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