So in my efforts to transfer my parents’ email files to the new system, I ran into some problems. How do you save Microsoft Outlook 5 messages on Mac?? I searched everywhere for a solution, looking in the Outlook folder for temp files, etc. No Go. Anyway, interestingly I found an article about transferring Outlook messages to the desktop and it talked about DRAG AND DROP:: Genius…. It was explaining how to move messages to an IMAP Server, but the basic principle was easy. Interestingly, Outlook does not have any export options for messages, there is for contacts (EXPORT CONTACTS), but this just exports a small text file with all the addresses without any formatting and I don’t even remember if it includes the actual names of the people. Weak on Microsoft’s part, but this was back in the Day of the hostility between the companies, and when Microsoft was alleged to have implemented loops in Microsoft Office to make it SLOWER on the Mac, so people would want to use PCs. I can’t remember what version this was, but I remember, back in the day on the Performa 5200 CD and the chunky software we were using—thank God things are streamlining a little…

Anyway, I realized this morning that in Outlook EXPRESS on a PC you can export messages, maybe this is the case on a Mac, didn’t think to try another program, Anyway, the Drag and Drop thing to the desktop, saved the messages as an Outlook file on the desktop which I moved into a folder for each specific Inbox, Outbox, etc. Anyway, this was a relief, but NO ONE ON THE NET SAID ANYTHING ABOUT THIS! Some people were talking about upgrading software and having Outlook importing from an older version, but jeez, even Microsoft Knowledge Base, said NOTHING about Drag and Drop, or transferring messages, if you are going to wipe your drive before a new install (highly recommended) than where are you going to save you files?? Especially if you can’t find the Microsoft temp Databases. They must be somewhere in OS 9, but I couldn’t find them, and this would be unsure, if you ended up (as in our case) using a new prog like Entourage, and obviously the database types would be different, even though they can read the same messages. So I did the lengthy process of dragging and dropping about 200 messages at a time into the Backup folder from all the folders we had in our Outlook. Took about 10m minutes or so.

Anyway, putting the files into Entourage was the same idea, no probs there, only you can’t select 2600 Inbox messages and DRAG them into the Inbox—nice try, but even a good computer will snap out—or at least just take a really long time. Even 200 messages at a time take the computer up to a minute to copy all the files. I have to say, Programmers:: is there a way to speed up computers handling deleting many small files. Even though the messages totaled only up to about 98 Mgs of space, because there were about 7000 files, it took the computer forever to delete (in OS 9 at least). OS X deleted 1500 messages in no time at all, but it seems like they could have written a patch to merge all the files into one block or something and erase it, handling the directory inputs for each little 16K file drives the computer nuts. Anyway, I guess they fixed this in OS X, but I imagine there’s some guy out there who is in charge of deleting all the little bit files on a database or something, and has this problem, little data actuality in terms of size, but large amount of files=Long deletion/copy time.

OK—Disaster Strikes! The only thing I have say about the transfer of the inbox messages was that it copyed all the messages there with NEW status. So there’s 2600 messages—all old—but showing up as new. OK, this doesn’t pose many problems since the mail prog lists the messages by date received, so your new messages will show up up top, but all the old ones were in BOLD and in new STATUS. OK, so do I go through 2600 messages, just opening them and closing them to put their status to READ, or do I tell my mom just to ignore this?? Anyway, LUCK STRIKES, in the sense that when I changed the database files (as you will later read) it put all the messages to OLD status. Cool! Anyway, I guess on a PC you can SELECT ALL and right-click and do Status>Mark as Read, but on the Mac, I couldn’t find this option…

OK so here’s my horror story:: Giorgio H Wombasit says:: MY FEET SMELL!! No but seriously, we had a little prob with email accounts when we tried to set up my Dad’s account in OS X:: We made a user for him, he logs in as PAPA, then we open Entourage, no original mail messages here from the Bluewin account (Like in my Mom’s account) OK, fine, no problem, let’s set up his Franklin College Switzerland account, so he can check this that and the other thing from home. Fine, easy, we fill in the POP/SMTP etc, and off… 106 new mail messages. Whatever they were from, that’s an abnormal amount, but this has nothing to do with anything, since they were all recent. The bottom line though, is 106 messages is a lot, and for my dad’s job, Dean of the College, it’s pretty important that he reads those messages, especially now that many of them have to do with closing semester concerns etc (no I did not ready his emails)…

OK, my Dad asks if I’ll merge his account with my Mom’s so they have one Inbox, and they can organize the messages accordingly, this was they way it was on OS 9, and they wanted it that way for the new system. So I delete my Dad’s account in OS X—no need for his user name anymore and Change my Mom’s account to MOM AND PAPA. Fine. Do you want to save user’s files? OK, sure, just in case (not thinking about email at this point).

OK, so genius being me, I setup his login info as another account in my Mom’s Entourage and I click Send/Receive for my Dad’s FC account. 1 message comes in… Where are all the 106?? AAAAAAA!!!

Ok, so then I’m off searching for an undelete prog to get my dad’s account back—who knows where I would have to venture to restore a user account, but weird, OS X does not have an account restore option, seems simple, since the computer creates a Disk Image of his Docs, and Music and stuff—all there, but there’s no easy way to tell it, RESTORE USER. Apple, wake up!!

Anyway, I open up the disk image of my Dad’s deleted user account and find the classic personal file folders:: Documents, Music, etc. Fine. So I search around and find a folder called Microsoft Identities and inside is a folder with some Entourage files:: About 6, Database, Rules, etc. So I try and open one. It opens Entourage, but to no avail, these are system files, it knows not what to do with them. So, being the Genius that I am, I go into my Mom’s home folder and take her Database Files out (236MB) temporarily and put my Dad’s in. I open Entourage:: 106 new mail messages! temporarily and put my Dad’s in. I open Entourage:: 106 new mail messages! YAY!! Cool!

So I drag all 106 to the desktop to save them, and zip ‘em and send em off to my dad’s email account so he can decompress ‘em and DRAG them into his Outlook. Where Macs may be the king of Drag ‘n Drop, PCs are not:: When I dragged the mail message in, it came up as an attachment in Outlook, furthermore, when I double clicked the file originally, it opened OUTLOOK EXPRESS, we don’t want this. If you try to import messages, you can only do this from programs other than Outlook, not Outlook itself. Weird. Anyway, maybe there’s a wizard that we don’t know about. Anyway, Outlook Express was set up for my dad’s account so he was able to read and respond to those emails in OE, and the replies would show up in Outlook 6, granted that he does not do Send/Receive in OE. OK fine. But my boss was still figuring out how to import. In OE you can export messages, and we did this, and interestingly, they all showed up in Outlook 6, maybe they share common databases when you export, or we had selected Export as Outlook 6, and so it had automatically dumped the files in the Outlook 6 inbox. For whatever it’s worth, I was left deleting duplicates that somehow got in there… More later…

©2004 Giovanni L. Zanecchia :: gzanecchia@bluemail.ch