Importing to Apple mail from Gyazmail using .mbox
Tom Bracken
a lot of mail messages. I'd like to get back to using Apple's Mail
program and need to import into Mail from Gyazmail. Gyazmail supposedly
supports the .mbox Unix format, and happily exports mailboxes. However,
there are problems when these mbox mailboxes are imported into Mail. If
there are, say, 155 messages in a Gyazmail mailbox that are exported,
when they are imported into Mail, only the first, say, 35 messages are
imported correctly. All of the rest the messages are lumped together
into one giant, multi-megabyte message that's impossible to deal with.
It looks to me as though Gyazmail isn't properly dealing with some of
its messages (no surprise, really, with all of the complex stuff coming
in through emal), they are corrupted when they are exported, and Mail
is choking on them. I just don't know exactly which message is corrupt,
and what the non-standard formatting is.
Is this a known issue? (that is, does Mail have problems importing
mbox?), and is there a known fix? Or, at least, is there some shareware
program that can clean up Gyazmail's export (if, indeed, that *is* the
problem), so that it can be properly imported into Mail?
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Andy Hewitt
<Snipped Text>
> Is this a known issue? (that is, does Mail have problems importing
> mbox?), and is there a known fix? Or, at least, is there some shareware
> program that can clean up Gyazmail's export (if, indeed, that *is* the
> problem), so that it can be properly imported into Mail?
>
> Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
I must admit I have been steering clear of the less standard mail apps
myself, and usually only jump between apps I *know* have standard
mailboxes - Eudora [1], Mail and Mozilla are all OK.
It might be worth trying a copy of Mail Scripts by Andreas Amann, these
do get around some of the problem of importing that Mail has. Not sure
how well it will work with Gyaz mboxes though.
[1] Eudora doesn't stictly use standard mbox format, as it strips
attachments.
--
Andy Hewitt ** FAF#1, (Ex-OSOS#5) - FJ1200 ABS
Honda Concerto 16v: Windows free zone (Mac G5 Dual Processor)
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Fetch, Rover, Fetch
text file.
I have not tried to move to Mail.app (no desire to use corrupable,
unrepairable, databses for email).
so I have not tried the export routines, however, they are NOT really
'export' routines; they must (attempt?) to build an mbox file from the
plain text messages.
the current versionof gayzmail is 1.1.10 - if you do not have this
version it is possible the issue has been resolved.
Andy Hewitt
> Gayzmail - does not use mboxes. It saves each mail as a separate plain
> text file.
Oh, I see. I haven't had a chance to try this yet to that extent, I've
on ly read his blurb and loaded the app for testing. Personally I didn't
like it much.
> I have not tried to move to Mail.app (no desire to use corrupable,
> unrepairable, databses for email).
Mail uses standard mboxes which are plain text files. The only thing
with mail is that it hides them inside a Mac OS 'Package', all you need
to do to extract the plain text file is to do a control-click and 'view
package', from there you can copy the mbox to the desktop (or wheverever
you like.
More easily though, you can also use another set of Mr Amann's scripts
to export from Mail as well.
> so I have not tried the export routines, however, they are NOT really
> 'export' routines; they must (attempt?) to build an mbox file from the
> plain text messages.
I see, well in that case all they are likely to need is to simply be
merged into a single file. You might have better like trying them in
BBEdit.
> the current versionof gayzmail is 1.1.10 - if you do not have this
> version it is possible the issue has been resolved.
Why not go an check the read-me file?
Fetch, Rover, Fetch
Andy Hewitt wrote:
> Fetch, Rover, Fetch <Fun_Fur@KaNine_University.edu> wrote:
>
>
>>Gayzmail - does not use mboxes. It saves each mail as a separate plain
>>text file.
>
>
> Oh, I see. I haven't had a chance to try this yet to that extent, I've
> on ly read his blurb and loaded the app for testing. Personally I didn't
> like it much.
>
>
>>I have not tried to move to Mail.app (no desire to use corrupable,
>>unrepairable, databses for email).
>
>
> Mail uses standard mboxes which are plain text files. The only thing
> with mail is that it hides them inside a Mac OS 'Package', all you need
> to do to extract the plain text file is to do a control-click and 'view
> package', from there you can copy the mbox to the desktop (or wheverever
> you like.
>
my point (based on the original poster's issue) even the mbox file can
get F**ed up. sure a plain text file can get screwed up too. but it
usually takes a hardware level issue (bad bit of a drive) to do that.
Proprietary DBs (or even extremely large text files - mbox), can become
damaged in such a manner as to make complete retrieval impossible.
And apparently there is *some* specified formatting for the file
otherwise the conversion from Gyazmail to Mail.app would not have
been/be an issue.
Murphy of course says that the ONE email plain text file you want is the
one that gets(got) screwed up by a disk error. but otherwise you lose 1
or 2 files from the bad sector not the entire 'archive'.
BTW - back to OP's problem -
since Gyazmail uses text files - maybe he could open the folders, remove
all but 35 or 40 (or whatever # actually will transfer normally) then
export, and replace the first 35 or 40 with the next.
Not as easy as it should be but it might work, and if one of the saved
emails is specifically to blame, then it might be located this way too.
Andy Hewitt
<Snipped Text>
> > Mail uses standard mboxes which are plain text files. The only thing
> > with mail is that it hides them inside a Mac OS 'Package', all you need
> > to do to extract the plain text file is to do a control-click and 'view
> > package', from there you can copy the mbox to the desktop (or wheverever
> > you like.
> >
>
> my point (based on the original poster's issue) even the mbox file can
> get F**ed up. sure a plain text file can get screwed up too. but it
> usually takes a hardware level issue (bad bit of a drive) to do that.
>
> Proprietary DBs (or even extremely large text files - mbox), can become
> damaged in such a manner as to make complete retrieval impossible.
Possibly, although the plain text files can usually be retrievable to
some extent, but your point is well made.
> And apparently there is *some* specified formatting for the file
> otherwise the conversion from Gyazmail to Mail.app would not have
> been/be an issue.
It's probably the way MIME or attachments are handled.
> Murphy of course says that the ONE email plain text file you want is the
> one that gets(got) screwed up by a disk error. but otherwise you lose 1
> or 2 files from the bad sector not the entire 'archive'.
True, although general experience suggests this is very rare indeed.
> BTW - back to OP's problem -
> since Gyazmail uses text files - maybe he could open the folders, remove
> all but 35 or 40 (or whatever # actually will transfer normally) then
> export, and replace the first 35 or 40 with the next.
>
> Not as easy as it should be but it might work, and if one of the saved
> emails is specifically to blame, then it might be located this way too.
Yes, that could work.