Email migration issues: Background: we are doing rollout planning for a 20 user corporate network using e-smith 4.1 as a core element. e-smith is handling the email server requirements for the organization. Goal: to painlessly migrate existing users email from outlook express / pop; outlook / exchange; eudora / pop, to outlook express / imap. you would think this should be easy... You would expect that all you'd need to do is add a imap account to the users email client and then drag and drop folders across. Existing email clients have variously a large number of hierarchically organised email folders, and have a mixture of HTML and plain text messages within them. In addition, received dates & times are often very important to the individuals to whom the email belongs. There seems to be no easy way of achieving the goal of migrating email to imap folders. Below is a matrix of our attempts: headings: 1 Email Client 2 Multiple import formats supported? 3 Imap Stability 4 Multiple Imap accounts? 5 HTML email 6 Drag multiple folders 7 changes dates 8 verdict data: 1 ???? 2 Yes 3 Very stable, 4 Yes 5 OK 6 Yes 7 No 8 I want it! If you know what it's called let me know! 1 Outlook 98 / NT4WS / NT4Server / win2KProf / win2KServ 2 Yes 3 crashes outlook with regularity. 4 Yes 5 OK 6 Yes 7 No 8 unusable 1 Eudora 5.02 2 Yes, but importers don't work very well. email goes missing... 3 Good 4 No 5 No, messages that were originally html are treated as plain text after migration. Users can read the html... 6 No. You can only move messages. 7 No 8 unusable except for very simple single folder, plain text mailboxes. 1 Netscape 6 win2KServ 2 Yes 3 Fair. Crashes on move of large folders (1000+ messages) 4 Yes 5 Yes 6 No. You can only move messages. 7 No 8 unusable except for small folders < 1000ish messages. 1 Outlook Express 5.5 2 Yes 3 Good 4 Yes 5 Yes 6 No. You can only move messages. 7 Yes (all received dates change to date & time of migration) sent dates & times are retained. 8 Usable but very slow if there are many folders since you have to manually recreate the folder structure on the imap account, and then move messages into them. 1 Outlook Express 5 Mac OS8.1+ 2 No 3 Good 4 Yes 5 Yes 6 Yes 7 No 8 equal Best solution yet, except we don't usually use macs, and we have to get our PC email from various clients into it. 1 Netscape 4.75 Mac 2 No 3 Good 4 Yes 5 Yes 6 Yes 7 No 8 see outlook express verdict. I find it hard to believe I am the first one who is having difficulty finding a sweet solution to what must be a very common problem. If anyone has come across a better solution than listed above, PLEASE let me know. I am open to any suggestions for any software on any platform that will do the job. If anyone is willing and able, I reckon a 'magic' email migrator would be a very profitable piece of code.... Mark Gunning ---------------------------------------------------- 02 62624080 (ph) 02 62425955 (fx) 0407 181969 (mobile) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (email) www.cubok.com (web)
