Eric Maryniak - Eudora2Unix

Welcome on my Eudora to Unix (eudora2unix) page!

IMPORTANT: Project has moved to SourceForge:

    eudora2unix now at http://eudora2unix.sourceforge.net/

Since November 2002, Stevan White (Stevan_White@hotmail.com) actively maintains this project, because I did not have time for it anymore. He has substantially contributed and actually rewritten my original Perl program to Python. Please check out his version, as it has much more options, e.g. explicit support for Pine.
Note that for a small number of mail folders, you can always use IMAP as an alternative for conversion between mailboxes if the source and target mail client both support it, because in that case you can simply use IMAP as a temporary intermediate persistent store.

My OLD Downloads (two files, or as tar.gz, tar.bz2)

• eudora2unix.sh - eudora mailbox directory tree walker
  Main driver program (a Bash shell script) that loops over the Eudora directory and calls the next Perl script, eudora2unix.pl, for each mailbox (.mbx file), therein. It also makes mail folders in the format that KMail expects.
  Note to Mac users: this shell script does not yet work (i.e. traverse) mailboxes and folders from a Mac, but somebody else is working on that (Eudora mailboxes from the Mac do not have the .mbx extension). Stay tuned!
  The next Perl script (eudora2unix.pl), does correctly work for Eudora mailboxes from a Mac, but only for one mailbox at a time.
• eudora2unix.pl - eudora to unix mailbox converter
  Perl script that converts a Eudora mailbox (.mbx file), from PC or Mac, to Unix mailbox (mbox) format and also fixes some header fields to allow for Eudora's idiosyncracies. It is a generic script that is not specific for KMail. You can also run the program directly, i.e. not from eudora2unix.sh, for an individual mailbox or put it in your own script that traverses the Eudora mailbox files.

Both scripts are placed under the GNU General Public License and are free software, both as in freedom and as in beer.
This software is also listed at Freshmeat and since November 2002 at SourceForge.net.

Installation, configuration and usage

• Simply put both scripts, after downloading (use shift-mouseclick with graphical browsers), in a directory from your $PATH. If you have root permissions, you may want to put it in /usr/local/bin.
• Make the files executable:
  
      chmod 0755 /path/to/eudora2unix.*


• Study the source, and maybe change some flags in the Configuration sections (although the defaults should be ok).
• Copy your Eudora directory to your Linux home directory:
  
      cp -prv /disk_windows/eudora ~/eudora


  
  
• Convert the entire ~/eudora directory to Unix ~/Mail, suitable for KMail, with:
  
      eudora2unix.sh ~/eudora


• Alternatively, try it out on a single mailbox file first:
  
      mkdir ~/tmp; cd ~/tmp
    cp -pv ~/eudora/in.mbx in.mbx
    eudora2unix.pl in.mbx


• Follow the instructions given by eudora2unix.sh and so, after studying and removing the *.ORIG, *.LOG, *.WARN and *.ERR files, start up KMail and see if the mail converted ok!
• Tip on merging old Unix $HOME/Mail mailboxes.
  If you have a previous ~/Mail directory (with mbox files), you can rename this directory (e.g. to Mail.old), then run the eudora2unix.sh and finally simply copy ~/Mail.old/somembx to ~/Mail/somembx.prev.
  In KMail move the mail from the 'somembx.prev' folder (which will pop up in KMail's left folder pane) to an appropiate location or rename the folder, etc.

Questions & Problems: Support
None, I'm sorry to say.
So if some kind soul wishes to take over maintenance, please be my guest!
Note (November 2002): Stevan White is now maintaining eudora2unix at SourceForge!
I am too busy with, well, eh, working and simply provided these scripts, with which I successfully migrated from that other OS to GNU/Linux (as my single OS) and KDE/KMail, as a courtesy to all other open-source software developers --- I am especially indebted to Blake Hannaford, whose initial Perl script got me going.
It was a one-time operation (after some finetuning) and I converted some 1 Gb mail (1994-2002), in some 100 mail folders (*.fol) and 1100 mailboxes (*.mbx) with a total of 200.000 messages in some 30 minutes on a Pentium-II (500 MHz, 256 Mb) with these two scripts (Eudora 4.3.2 to KMail 1.3.2, dd. 2002-01-28). I have no further use for these scripts now and you are free to do with them as you see fit, of course within the constraints of the GNU General Public License under which they are released.
Together with

• KMail's good Eudora address book import utility,
  
• J-Pilot (excellent Palm desktop & syncing),
• Konqueror (good Netscape bookmark import utility),
• Mozilla (for web sites that do not work with Konqueror) and
• OpenOffice (for the occasional 'office' document and PDF's)

Linux: because source does matter.

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