Outlook, Outlook Express --> UNIX mailbox format liberation: yes!
Dan Jacobson
into say a Unix mbox format or whatever. However, I have found a
obscure passageway out.
The final part of the story is incomplete, awaiting me to just do the
several minutes of adjusting for gnus that I haven't got around to, but
what I found so far should still be of help to users with the perennial
question of how to get their stuff out of outlook.
-------------------here we go-----------:
>>>>> "D" == Dan Jacobson <jid...@kimo.FiXcomTHiS.tw> writes:
D> Preliminary results on Outlook Express --> GNU Linux liberation
D> Note: I am extra dumb and I'm sure there's better ways to do this.
D> Preliminary results on getting one's sent netnews messages [and
D> perhaps any other stuff in a .dbx file] out of the clutches of
D> Outlook Express 5: By Dan Jacobson, tested: for 1 minute only,
D> after initial success.
D> Goal: stop using M$ and get on GNU/Linux. Problem: I've got
D> several hundred of my brilliant netnews posts that I must take with
D> me if I want to keep my record of never having lost a byte of my
D> precious golden keystrokes intact.
D> OK, Go into Outlook Express 5 [I only used it for netnews, not for
D> e-mail, I haven't tried too hard to 'crack' plain Outlook [not
D> Express] yet]. You go into the folder where your copies of your
Indeed, seemed like they sealed up plain Outlook2000 pretty good, but
wait, in Outlook Express I noticed I could "import" my plain Outlook
folders! Ah ha! Be sure to rename any Outlook Express folder of the
same name before you do this, else plain Outlook messages will be
copied into it alongside your original messages.
Import steps were: [using the letter symbols, because I don't know
what the original English names are because I use the Chinese
version.] File (F)>I>E, select 'Microsoft outlook' (S), Messages,
select the plain Outlook folder to integrate or all, note that you will get
you messages intermingled with Outlook Express messages unless you first
renamed you Outlook Express folders.
D> brilliant posts are, [read first then do the stuff that worked for
D> me:] you control-click them [to select more than one, beter yet,
D> there's a select all option on a menu] and then you got to the file
D> menu choice and discover that the 'save to file' choice is no
D> longer highlighted, ha ha they only allow you to save one file, no
D> problem: give up and instead now go to 'search' thru that folder [I
D> don't know the exact English menu names because I'm using the
D> Chinese version, plus too lazy to check], you search match all your
D> items, and again the save to file option's lights are out as you
D> have chosen more than one file, but not the forward option !!! ha
D> ha the chumps at M$ forgot to seal that off [Win98SE]! Conspiracy
D> failed! OK, so you 'send' all your news items in that folder as a
D> multi file attachment.... and save this unsent mail to disk.
D> Indeed, it has a long attachment with your files uuencoded! we are
D> almost home!
To reiterate: Still in Outlook Express, select the folder of interest,
and select find: Edit (E)>F>M, now search for everything, e.g., by
checking all items 'earlier' than 'now', now all items are added to
the found set, then select them all: Edit (E)>A.
Now pick Mail(M)>A to 'send them all as attachments' [devious or
what?!], now choose File (F)>A to save this letter with its many
attachments as a file. [Don't pick "save the attachments" (V) as that
will create a mess, especially with same Subject lines...]
Save this file as whatever.eml . [Inside this file one can see that the
messages are also uuencoded .eml files.]
D> OK, now boot up GNU/Linux and go to that file and run my brilliant
D> shell script below. when I did it my file with the long attachment
D> was called 128let.eml and I made a tmp dir called /tmp/oo, col I
D> think cured the ^M's at end of lines.
#uudecode only can handle one encapsulated file it seems
cat 128let.eml|col| (cd /tmp/oo;\
awk '
BEGIN {xxx="uudecode"}
/begin 666/ {print "begin 666 "++a|xxx;next} #neaten names, else uses Subject...
{print|xxx}
/^end/ {close (xxx)}
')
D> this gives you oo/1 oo/2 oo/3 ... each file containing one of your
D> brilliant posts, which I'm sure now can be handled by gnus in one
D> of its many modes... I suppose you needn't neaten file names if
D> you don't mind spaces in filenames and want to see the subject as
D> the filename... but what if there's a slash in there or
D> something...
More on our next episode. Anyway maybe one would just
$ cat * > becomes_a_new_unix_mailbox_format_file
but I will see how gnus deals with the separate files on our next episode.
>>>>> "ZSH" == ShengHuo ZHU <z...@cs.rochester.edu> writes:
ZSH> "Osman" <tala...@get2net.dk> writes:
>>> Hi, I want to start using Gnus as my mail reader (i know it's
>>> really a news reader), but before i do the switch I have to,
>>> somehow, convert 2-3000 mails from my current mail reader which is
>>> Outlook Express 5.5 to something that Gnus understands, so I need
>>> a program which can do this. Does anyone here know of any such
>>> programs or have any experience with doing this ? Alternativly,
>>> if that is not possible, I can convert these messages to somthing
>>> else (ie. Netscape mail) and then do the conversion
ZSH> OGnus (since 2000-07-16) can read some formats of OE mailboxes as
ZSH> nndoc, i.e., you can type `G f' to subscribe an OE mailbox, then
ZSH> copy messages from the mailbox to another backend. But I am not
ZSH> sure whether it understands the format of OE 5.5 mailbox. If
ZSH> not, sending me a sample mailbox (at least two mails in it) will
ZSH> help me figure it out.
P.S. No warranty with my advice, duh. Be sure to backup first.
--
http://www.geocities.com/jidanni Tel886-4-25854780 e-mail:restore .com.