David Carpe of Gmail Pro and passingnotes emails to say what an excellent app Eudora Mailbox Cleaner is, and how easily it helped him to move from Eudora for Windows to Mail.app on his new Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro.

In short, he says, Andreas Amann’s app is “flawless, perfect”, although he takes the opportunity to point out a few things.

In particular, he recommends patience:

The first part—dragging it all, setting up folders, etc, and then dragging the whole ‘Eudora folder’ onto the cleaner only took about an hour or so, but the script to rebuild boxes can take longer. It took me a couple of hours. Do NOT interrupt it. My advice is to turn off all other programs and just walk away and let it do it’s thing.

Secondly, he notes something specific to Eudora for Windows switchers:

For nicknames: Many Eudora for Windows users will be scratching their heads about ‘nndbase.txt’ in the instructions as it doesn’t exist in the new version. It’s actually a different file type. I pinged Andreas about this. What I did (and yes, this worked flawlessly) was drag the entire Eudora for Windows into the folder that I had created called ‘eudora folder’ (as per Andreas’ instructions). Then when I dragged that whole thing onto the cleaner the dialogue box popped up. I simply deselected everything except ‘import nicknames’ and voila, they were all inside my address book within about two minutes. I did this last, after doing all of my mail and attachments.

Anyone reading this and teetering on the edge, might like to know that Eudora Mailbox Cleaner also does a terrific job for people coming over from Thunderbird.

I’m not going to make any snide remarks about someone who runs a Gmail site switching to Mail.app. No, not one.

I’ll just join with him and many others in thanking the developers who make such great plugins and utilities available to normal users like me. Mail.app wouldn’t be half the app it is without them, and they don’t get thanked enough.

Soppy, but true.

“Thank you a million times over, Andreas,” David says.eudora for windows, thunderbird, mail.app, apple mail, gmail, email, switching, nicknames, kiss a developer day

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

Mark McElroy has written an ebook which catalogues 101 reasons why anyone is their right mind should be using a Mac.

It covers a wide range of pretty persuasive arguments, from the obligatory “it just works” to the best apps for Mac, web sites, useful blogs and how to get the most out of your Mac for education, finance management and work. He also presents a great rebuttal of myths about the lack of inter-operability and the much debated question of “value for money”.

Of course, this would make excellent reading for those teetering on the brink of switching. Buy half-a-dozen for family and friends whom you would most like to rescue from themselves.

But it also contains plenty of good info for seasoned Mac users. For example, I didn’t know about the Mac modification site MacMod until I read about it in 101 Reasons.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that Hawk Wings gets a listing (which is nice) and that Mark gave me a free copy to review (which is extra nice — I’ve only had six freebies before).

So, you can also read Mark’s kind words about Hawk Wings (and its helpful, knowledgeable readers), which comes in at number 92, just under 43folders.com and just above iPod mecca iLounge.com

More to the point, you can read about 100 even better reasons why will be/are glad to be a Mac user.

It’s a steal at just USD 3.49, which works out at slightly over 6 cents a page. My wife tells me that’s the price of half a salad sandwich at the deli near her chambers.

The book is produced by the IT and technical book specialists QUE Publishing in its Shortcuts to Knowledge series and is available from Mark’s web site mail.app, apple mail, tips, switching, apple, resources, book

Matthew Russell at MacDevCenter has produced a magnificent walkthrough with lavish screenshots for switching your online life from .Mac to Google’s many free apps.

He covers moving and forwarding email from .Mac to Gmail, getting your contacts into Gmail with Address Book to CSV converter and how to extract the Mail.app’s Previous Recipients list from the Envelope Index file in your ~/Library/Mail folder.

Using Google Calendar is next up, including exporting calendars from iCal, Google Calendar’s features and using Google Notifier.

Finally, he talks a bit about gDisk which provides a nice way to use some of your Gmail quota space as file storage.

Whether switching your life from .Mac to Google is a good idea is something that he doesn’t answer. mail.app, apple mail, ical, gmail, google calendar, switching

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

.Mac users who have their email set up as a POP account but would like to change it to the newer (and better) IMAP format, can find help in a thread on the Apple Discussion Boards.

A user in that situation asked for guidance and received two useful replies which set out different methods for making the switch.

Allan Sampson’s procedure (the second reply) seems simplest.

Following the steps set out there will make sure no emails are lost or accidently deleted by Mail.app’s unpleasant POP account ambush.mail.app, apple mail, tips, pop, imap, switching, dotmac, .mac, ambush

I was surprised to discover an email that I received a few days ago was written in Mailsmith, so someone is still using it. (In fact, he is a member of the Mac blogging nobility, where Mailsmith retains strong appeal, so I shouldn’t have been so surprised).

If you are using Mailsmith and thinking about a move to Mail.app (or anywhere else), David Hamilton has written a script that exports emails in a smarter way than the default that comes with Mailsmith itself.

He has tweaked it so that it will preserve your folder hierarchy in Mailsmith which the default script flattens.

Of course, “no guarantees, representations, or warrantees by the author or anyone else”. mail.app, apple mail, mailsmith, exporting, applescript, folders, switching