3.5   Importing Mail

Importing mail into EagleFiler speeds up your mail program and backups, creates an efficient and secure archive of your mail, and lets you organize and search mail messages alongside related files. The recommended way to import mail varies depending on which mail program you’re using:

Apple Mail

Select some mailboxes and press the capture key. EagleFiler will preserve the message status and flagged indicators from Mail, as well as any keywords, projects, and notes from MailTags. The mail will be converted to standard mbox format. EagleFiler is able to import messages from IMAP mailboxes, however it will only import the parts of the messages that have been downloaded from the server. Thus, it is recommended that you select the option in Mail’s preferences to keep All messages and their attachments for offline viewing.

Entourage

Drag mailboxes from Entourage to the Finder, and then drag the exported mailboxes into EagleFiler. For small mailboxes, you can drag directly from Entourage to EagleFiler. You can also drag individual messages or exported .eml files into EagleFiler. This will create one mailbox per message; you can merge the mailboxes in EagleFiler if desired.

Eudora

Mailboxes are stored in the Mail Folder folder inside the Eudora Folder folder, and they can be dragged from the Finder into EagleFiler. They are not actually in mbox format (for example, the attachments are removed), but the format is close enough that EagleFiler will be able to read most of the messages. Running the mailboxes through Eudora Mailbox Cleaner before importing them into EagleFiler may produce better results. The .toc files are not mailboxes and should not be imported.

GyazMail

Select some mailboxes and choose File ‣ Export ‣ Unix mbox…. Then drag the exported files into EagleFiler.

Mailsmith

Use the capture key to import the selected mailboxes or drag the selected messages into EagleFiler. You may find it helpful to use Email Archiver to separate messages by age before importing them into EagleFiler. In Mailsmith 2.1.5, dragging mailboxes directly to EagleFiler will not work, but you can drag mailboxes to the Finder and then drag the exported files into EagleFiler.

PowerMail

Select some mailboxes and drag them to the Finder. Choose Unix Mailbox when it asks you to pick a format. Then drag the exported files into EagleFiler.

Thunderbird

The mailboxes are stored in the folder:

/Users/<username>/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/<profile>/Mail/Local Folders/

and can be dragged from the Finder to EagleFiler. The .msf files are not mailboxes and should not be imported.

Webmail

Web-based mail services do not store mail files on disk, so there is nothing for EagleFiler to read. The best way to import Webmail is to connect to the mail account using one of the above mail programs. If your Webmail does not support this, you can drag and drop text from your Web browser, use File ‣ Save to save messages into EagleFiler’s To Import folder, or print and choose Save PDF to EagleFiler.

When importing mail:

1. EagleFiler imports the entire raw source of the message, including the attachments and headers. In other words, all the information is preserved; if desired, the messages can be imported back into the mail program with full fidelity. (Exceptions: When importing from Eudora, EagleFiler imports the message text as processed and stored by Eudora, and it does not import the attachments, which Eudora stores separately. Webmail messages imported as PDFs do not include the full source or attachments.)
2. As with other types of imports, EagleFiler copies the messages into its library. When it’s done, you can delete the messages from your mail program. It’s simpler to have each message stored in only one place (the mail program or EagleFiler), and this way you won’t accidentally import multiple copies of the same messages into EagleFiler.
3. EagleFiler stores messages in mailbox (“mbox”) files. This is both for efficiency (one file rather than thousands for a mailbox containing thousands of messages) and for compatibility with other software that can read the standard mbox format.
4. Each time you import from a mailbox, a new mailbox file is created in EagleFiler, using the same name as in your mail program. If you had previously imported from that mailbox, you may already have a mailbox file in EagleFiler with that name.
   • Some people like to leave each import as a separate mailbox, e.g. so that for each mailbox there’s one file per month or per year.
   • Others prefer to have a single file that holds all the messages imported from that mailbox over time. To do this, select the Records source and sort by title. This will group the related mailboxes together. You can then select the related mailboxes and use the Merge Mailboxes command to combine them into a single mailbox. The combined mailbox will be stored in the folder that contained the oldest of the selected mailboxes, so your organizational structure is preserved even though the newly imported mailbox might have been imported at the top level.