KMail users looking to switch to Apple Mail now have a smarter tool to help make the transition.

Last year a poster on macOSXHints provided a script for importing KMail mailboxes into Mail.

Now another poster has produced an updated script that preserves the time stamp on the original emails.mail.app, apple mail, kmail, linux, switching, mailboxes, importing

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 :)]mail.app, apple mail, eudora, switching, conversion, mailboxes, email, thunderbird

Emailchemy is an amazing utility that can convert mailboxes from a vast array of email clients (ranging from most currently in use to others long forgotten) into any one of the following formats:

RFC-2822 mailboxes (“mbox” format or “UNIX-style”) and variants, folders of individual RFC-2822 email files (.txt or .eml files), Comma-separated value files (.csv files), Maildir (qmail) and Maildir++ (Courier IMAP).

A new updated version (1.8) adds a “toolbox” option to the app’s main screen:

The new utilities offer useful extra additional conversion grunt:

1. IMAP ImportServer – import your converted mail into your new email software using this desktop mail server.
2. Mailbox Splitter – split large mbox files by message count or file size
3. Address Harvester – extract email addresses from almost any file
4. Mac OS X Mail Cleaner – clean out files leftover from the Tiger upgrade

Emailchemy is shareware (USD 28 for a single user) and is available from the developer’s web site .mailboxes, conversion, mbox, email, imap, maildir, old email clients

Logan Rockmore’s notification utility Mail Unread Menu has been updated (again).

Now at version 2.0, it been repackaged as an application with an assisting mail bundle, which adds greater stability.

The font size and colour of the message count can now be set in the preferences and an option to Compose a new message has been added to the app’s drop-down menu.

Best of all, the drop-down menu now lists the new messages by individual mailboxes. Clicking on the one you want jumps you directly to that mailbox, saving time and mouse-clicks. Nice.

It’s safe to say that this is now the best of the menubar notification utilities.

Mail Unread Menu is freeware (donations not refused) and is available from Logan’s web site . mail.app, apple mail, notification, plugins, bundles, unread messages, mailboxes

Dave Hamilton from the Mac Observer is thinking about switching to Mail.app.

He has had a gutful of his old mail client:

Mailsmith, by most rights, has stagnated. It pains me to write this, because as I said, I’m a really big fan of BareBones, and enjoy a great working relationship with their head-honcho, Rich Siegel. But it’s true… Mailsmith hasn’t had a public release/update since March of 2005. Now some folks may argue that it doesn’t need an update, and for those folks, I’m sure that’s correct. My big problem is that I manage a LOT of e-mail… I have almost 1400 mailboxes within which are nearly 200,000 e-mail messages. I pretty much save everything, and it’s saved my ass in HUGE ways over the years, so I ain’t gonna stop.

So, he wonders, does Mail.app have what it takes to manage a large number of mailboxes and bucketloads of email? Or is he better off archiving off a large slab of the emails and staying with Mailsmith?

My advice is not much good. I only have about 35,000 emails spread over four IMAP accounts and about ten mailboxes (see further, “How the delete key is your best friend”). That’s chicken feed by Dave’s standards.

Justin Blanton once ran a challenge to find the largest Mail mailbox, putting up his own inbox of 22,000 as a candidate.

What’s your experience? What’s your biggest mailbox? How many mailboxes does your Mail.app handle without working up a sweat?

Can Mail.app take the load? Does size matter?mail.app, apple mail, mailboxes, email volume, biggest mailbox, switching, Mailsmith, email in general

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 .eudora, thunderbird, mail.app, apple mail, converting, mailboxes, filters, email addresses, switching

Emailchemy is an amazing utility that can convert and retrieve emails out of almost any email client you have ever heard of and some that didn’t know existed.

See an earlier Hawk Wings post for a full list of the 19 clients and formats it understands.

It can save emails and mailboxes from these clients into the following formats:

RFC-2822 mailboxes (”mbox” format or “UNIX-style”) and variants, folders of individual RFC-2822 email files (.txt or .eml files), Comma-separated value files (.csv files), Maildir (qmail) and Maildir++ (Courier IMAP).

An updated version released today support for reading and writing Entourage .rge archive files.

Emailchemy is shareware (USD 25 for a single user) and is available from the developer’s webs site .mailboxes, conversion, mbox, email, maildir, old email clients