Re: Mailbox conversion

[Jan Willem Stumpel]

Just to mention the follow-up: I used kmail and its convert
program on the old dbx files, and it worked fine. But the results
were in maildir format (each message in a separate file), not in
mbox format (a whole lot of messages in one file, which apparently
Thunderbird/Icedove are used to). But some googling revealed a
maildir-to-mbox shell script: http://tinyurl.com/6zdn4s

This produced mbox files that I could drop into my wife's
Thunderbird local mail directory. The only trouble was that the
script did not recognise filenames with spaces in them (even when
quoted with a reverse slash character). But simple renaming fixed
this. Everything works fine now. Thanks, list!

Regards. Jan


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Re: Mailbox conversion

[Jan Willem Stumpel]

Mark Grieveson wrote:

[..]
> If the idea of running a dos program on Linux nauseates you, 
> then I also read that Kmail, with the kmailcvt (kmail
> converter) package installed also works.

Actuallly I am quite a fan of dosemu (and even of DOS), but DOS
can't handle filenames longer than 8+3, let alone names with
Japanese characters in them.

I think I'll try the kmail route first; this has now been
mentioned twice.

Regards, Jan


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Re: Mailbox conversion

[Mark Grieveson]

On Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:50:29 + (UTC)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> After all this smalltalk, my real question: I still have lots of
> old e-mail in Microsoft format (with names like in-2005.dbx,
> out-2006.dbx, etc; some filenames are in Japanese, and the
> messages inside the .dbx files are mostly Japanese). I searched
> the web for "converting dbx to mbox". Found lots of answers, most
> of them seem old, and they do not agree. Is there a "canonical"
> way to make .dbx mail archives available to Linux Thunderbird/Icedove?
> 
> Regards, Jan


I read of two solutions, both of which sound reasonably easy.  

The first is to install a dos program called DbxConv, and, run it under
an emulator like dosemu to convert all your files.  Available at
http://freenet-homepage.de/ukrebs/english/dbxconv.html

If the idea of running a dos program on Linux nauseates you, then I
also read that Kmail, with the kmailcvt (kmail converter) package
installed also works.

Mark


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Re: Mailbox conversion

[Jochen Schulz]

Jan Willem Stumpel:
> 
> After all this smalltalk, my real question: I still have lots of
> old e-mail in Microsoft format (with names like in-2005.dbx,
> out-2006.dbx, etc; some filenames are in Japanese, and the
> messages inside the .dbx files are mostly Japanese). I searched
> the web for "converting dbx to mbox". Found lots of answers, most
> of them seem old, and they do not agree. Is there a "canonical"
> way to make .dbx mail archives available to Linux Thunderbird/Icedove?

The easiest and most reliable way is to set up a local IMAP server (I
recommend dovecot, it's really easy for simple set ups), create a new
IMAP account in Outlook and move the mails to the IMAP server. After
that you can access the mails from every client supporting IMAP (which
is probably every client worth using in the first place).

I don't know how to import the old dbx files into another, existing
Outlook installation, though.

J.
-- 
I'm being paid to act weirdly.
[Agree]   [Disagree]
 


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Re: Mailbox conversion

[Ron Johnson]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 06/25/08 14:38, Jan Willem Stumpel wrote:
> Finally the motherboard of my wife's computer broke down, so I had
> to replace it. I could not just get a new motherboard, because
> they do not sell boards with "462" sockets anymore. The cheapest
> solution was an MSI motherboard with AMD-64 dual core and one gig
> of memory. You cannot get anything simpler nowadays. I can clearly
> remember the time when such specs would have meant "supercomputer"
> (as in "several million dollars").
> 
> This operation made her old Windows 2000 unusable. You can run a
> 32-bit OS on a 64-bit machine, but some things (notably the ATI
> display drivers for the new motherboard) refuse to install if the
> OS is not 64-bit. A great opportunity to install Linux. I didn't
> install Debian itself, but the 64-bit version of Ubuntu. After
> some tweaking it works fine, including some difficult things like
> Japanese input, printing through the home network, etc. Before
> reformatting the Windows hard disk I first copied its contents to
> a USB external disk. From there I could restore the mail address
> book (Outlook -> Thunderbird) and the browser favorites/bookmarks
> (IE -> Firefox). My wife thinks the new system is great.
> 
> After all this smalltalk, my real question: I still have lots of
> old e-mail in Microsoft format (with names like in-2005.dbx,
> out-2006.dbx, etc; some filenames are in Japanese, and the
> messages inside the .dbx files are mostly Japanese). I searched
> the web for "converting dbx to mbox". Found lots of answers, most
> of them seem old, and they do not agree. Is there a "canonical"
> way to make .dbx mail archives available to Linux Thunderbird/Icedove?

http://search.cpan.org/~vparseval/Mail-Transport-Dbx-0.07/Dbx.pm

Under Wine or Win2k in a VM:
http://www.mailnavigator.com/export_messages_to_eudora_mail.html

- --
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA  USA

"Kittens give Morbo gas.  In lighter news, the city of New New
York is doomed."
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Mailbox conversion

[Jan Willem Stumpel]

Finally the motherboard of my wife's computer broke down, so I had
to replace it. I could not just get a new motherboard, because
they do not sell boards with "462" sockets anymore. The cheapest
solution was an MSI motherboard with AMD-64 dual core and one gig
of memory. You cannot get anything simpler nowadays. I can clearly
remember the time when such specs would have meant "supercomputer"
(as in "several million dollars").

This operation made her old Windows 2000 unusable. You can run a
32-bit OS on a 64-bit machine, but some things (notably the ATI
display drivers for the new motherboard) refuse to install if the
OS is not 64-bit. A great opportunity to install Linux. I didn't
install Debian itself, but the 64-bit version of Ubuntu. After
some tweaking it works fine, including some difficult things like
Japanese input, printing through the home network, etc. Before
reformatting the Windows hard disk I first copied its contents to
a USB external disk. From there I could restore the mail address
book (Outlook -> Thunderbird) and the browser favorites/bookmarks
(IE -> Firefox). My wife thinks the new system is great.

After all this smalltalk, my real question: I still have lots of
old e-mail in Microsoft format (with names like in-2005.dbx,
out-2006.dbx, etc; some filenames are in Japanese, and the
messages inside the .dbx files are mostly Japanese). I searched
the web for "converting dbx to mbox". Found lots of answers, most
of them seem old, and they do not agree. Is there a "canonical"
way to make .dbx mail archives available to Linux Thunderbird/Icedove?

Regards, Jan


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Re: Outlook to GNU/Linux mailbox conversion is possible with exis ting tools

[Karsten M. Self]

on Wed, Jul 25, 2001 at 01:07:54PM -0400, Zieg, Mark (N-Superior) ([EMAIL 
PROTECTED]) wrote:
> A similar process worked great for me:
> 
> (1) Get Outlook Express working on the same computer as your corporate
> Outlook/Exchange system.
> 
> (2) Create an Outlook Express account pointed to an IMAP server on a Unix
> box.
> 
> (2.1) If the corporate firewall blocks IMAP port 143 (mine did), but leaves
> open more-common ports like 80 (telnet) or 443 (https), then put an sshd
  ^^
That would be http/www.

There's a Debian package (whose name escapes) me that provides for
pretty straightforward ssh-over-port-80 firewall bypassing.

-- 
Karsten M. Self http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
 What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?   There is no K5 cabal
  http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ http://www.kuro5hin.org
   Are these opinions my employer's?  Hah!  I don't believe them myself!


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Re: Outlook to GNU/Linux mailbox conversion is possible with exis ting tools

[Zieg, Mark \(N-Superior\)]

A similar process worked great for me:

(1) Get Outlook Express working on the same computer as your corporate
Outlook/Exchange system.

(2) Create an Outlook Express account pointed to an IMAP server on a Unix
box.

(2.1) If the corporate firewall blocks IMAP port 143 (mine did), but leaves
open more-common ports like 80 (telnet) or 443 (https), then put an sshd
server on the same box as the IMAP server, and run it with 'sshd -p 80'.
Then you create a port-forwarding "tunnel" using a ssh client on your work
machine, like VanDyke's SecureCRT, which forwards "localhost:port" to
"remote-unix-server:port".  Finally, you can then define your Outlook
Express account with an IMAP server of "localhost:80".  (You may want to
create a second tunnel for port 25, ie SMTP, so that you can also send mail
from Outlook Express if your local sysadmins also have SMTP blocked...ugh!)
Anyway, you can now hit "Send/Recieve" on Outlook Express, and IMAP and SMTP
will both be securely tunnelled to the remote IMAP server, right through the
firewall.  Sweet!

(3) As with Dan's instructions below, use Outlook Express's existing
"File/Import" function to import mail from your Outlook/Exchange folders.
This will import the mail into "local" (non-IMAP) Outlook Express folders.

(4) Drag-n-drop the messages from your "local" Outlook Express folder into
your IMAP account.  This will actually create a Maildir (if that's how your
IMAP server is configured) file on the remote Unix server, for each and
every message, in proper RFC822/MIME format.  Perfecto!

Mark Zieg
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


---- Original Message -- 
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org 
Subject: Re: Outlook to GNU/Linux mailbox conversion is possible with
existing tools 
From: Dan Jacobson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
Date: 07 Mar 2001 09:01:15 +0800 
Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
User-Agent: Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) Emacs/20.7 


How I got my mail out of Outlook 2000 and Outlook Express 5 into GNU/Linux
without special tools By Dan Jacobson 3/2001
---

Below is me commenting on my earlier [D>] discussion.  Below I've left
the steps a little loose... maybe somebody will polish this up.  I
didn't try the IMAP thingy.  I did try lots of windows programs
mentioned on webpages, that didn't work...
---

They say one needs fancy tools to extract ones Outlook 5 mail files
into say a Unix mbox format or whatever.  However, I have found a
obscure passageway out.

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 and Outlook Express 5:

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.  Email too, sent & received.

Can you believe were about to move our stuff from Outlook into Outlook
Express then into GNU/Linux.

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.  Yuck.

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.  Yuck.

Re: Outlook to GNU/Linux mailbox conversion is possible with existing tools

[Dan Jacobson]

Hello Fellas, unfortunately when we read and reply to this list via
netnews, the mailing list folks won't see it [smart].  So here's a
repost via mail.  My real address is jidanni @t kimo.com.tw

Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Outlook to GNU/Linux mailbox conversion is possible with existing tools
Date: 02 Mar 2001 00:01:03 +0800

How I got my mail out of Outlook 2000 and Outlook Express 5 into GNU/Linux
without special tools By Dan Jacobson 3/2001
---

Below is me commenting on my earlier [D>] discussion.  Below I've left
the steps a little loose... maybe somebody will polish this up.  I
didn't try the IMAP thingy.  I did try lots of windows programs
mentioned on webpages, that didn't work...
---

They say one needs fancy tools to extract ones Outlook 5 mail files
into say a Unix mbox format or whatever.  However, I have found a
obscure passageway out.

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 and Outlook Express 5:

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.  Email too, sent & received.

Can you believe were about to move our stuff from Outlook into Outlook
Express then into GNU/Linux.

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.  Yuck.

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.  Yuck.

[brief interlude of me banging around inside the maze that they thought
they had sealed up:]

D> you control-click them [to select more than one, better 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 *.eml . "col" I think cured the ^M's at end of
D> lines. [try dos2unix next time]

: #middle part of Outlook 5 -> Outlook Express 5 -> gnus travail
set -ex
#my personal setup for this run
source=mysentmail.eml #file forced out of OE 5 by extreme methods
target=outlook_sent_mail #I plan to call a new gnus nnml folder
#or for another run of mine:
source=mymailbox.eml
target=outlook_inbox

maildir=~/Mail/mail/$target #gnus's'
grep -c begin\ 666 $source #informational and quit if error [0 found]] [set -e] 
above]
mkdir $maildir #fail if already there... we would be overwriting!
cat $source|col| (cd $maildir
awk '
BEGIN {xxx="uudecode"}
#uud