Here's a few tips I would like to share having made then transition from MS Windows (R) to Apple's Mac OS X.
Some of these might also apply to the older Mac OS 9.x versions; however, I recommend switching to
OS X if you want to use a modern operating system.
See below for printing.
Check Paul berkowitz AppleScripts for some useful scripts which might save you a lot of the hassle described below. (I haven't tried them!)
You will need some software. However, you'll probably like to have these programs anyways.
Moving the Address Book: Outlook (Express) to Entourage
Despite the fact that a lot of web sites tell you this is a piece of cake: It's not as easy...
Exporting...
Outlook Express allows you to export your contacts as text file (with separating commas): select all contact details when asked.
However, this text file can't
be imported into Entourage. The reason lies in the faulty (?) output of Outlook Express: OE's commas are in fact semicolons. So, you ought to use a text editor such as Apple's TextEdit or
BBEdit to replace each ; with a tabulator sign. In BBEdit, you may use \t as replacement. That's it - you may import this file into Entourage now.
Saving your äs and és...
Besides, you might need to convert the code pages, if diacritics (and other 'special', i.e. non-north-American characters) don't display properly.
One way to do this is: 1) Load the text file into a Windows text editor such as TextPad and save it using the "Unicode" option. Do not save as UTF-8 - this won't work.
Read the file on the Mac using an advanced text editor, such as BBEdit. Then, choose (in one of the icon menus at the top border of the window) not to encode the file in Unicode.
Moving Mailboxes and Mail Settings
Hardly any mail client supports cross-platform message database conversion. However, there are a few tools to help you do the trick.
There is a
conversion script available to transfer from Outlook Express (Win) to Entourage (Mac),
however, it works with single .eml files, one for each mail. With a database of some 10.000 mails as in my case,
this is not really an option. (I tried, OE crashed soon..).
You could also try Check Paul berkowitz AppleScripts.
I recommend to do the following.
Short description
First, Convert the files to standard Unix mbox format. You may need to correct CR/LF into Unix standard LF.
After this, you may do one of the following:
- Import the mbox files directly into Entourage. Use "Import...", "text file", "mbox". If this fails...
- Import the mbox files into Qualcomm's Eudora and then import the Eudora mailboxes into Entourage. However, Entourage crashed
(in my experiments) during this import procedure. If have the same problem...
- You will need access to a Unix based server or any other machine that runs
a POP server with mbox format. If you don't have one, you may use OS X as POP server, if you install the right
server software (qpopper?), which I have not tried.
Long description: Step by step
Depending on your setup, the transfer of all messages may take two hours or so. However, most of it is done
automatically.
We will export your existing data to the standard Unix "mbox" format. Then, we will use a POP server to deliver the messages
to the target application. As long as you can export your mailboxes to the mbox format (possible for Outlook Express), this
will work with any target mail client.
- Convert your data to mbox. While liboe / oe2mbx is supposed
to be able to convert Outlook Express mailboxes to the standard Unix "mbox" format, it crashes with some (long?)
mails, failed to convert most of my ~4000 outgoing ("sent") messages and did not compile in a standard Linux (gcc / gmake)
setting.
Instead, get an evaluation copy of the nice Windows E-Mail client "The Bat" here.
Install it, import your Outlook Express Messages with the standard Import function. Then open each mail folder here,
select (Control-A) all messages contained therein and export them to "Unix mailbox" format.
- If you used liboe (or something else), you might need to convert the line endings in the file. Windows uses
CR/LF, while Unix uses only LF endings. You can use crcorr.perl to do this.
- If you want to use Entourage, you may import the mbox files directly using "Import...", "text file", "mbox". Otherwise, go to the next step.
- This involves a Unix machine you have access to. Make sure, a POP mail service is running
and accessible from your target machine. Of course, you can install qpopper (or something like it) on your OS X machine directly - remember: OS X is a Unix based operating system.
You could also use a POP server on a Windows machine, if you find one.
Find the mail spool file, which usually resides in /var/spool/mail or /usr/spool/mail (any of them will work).
Your mail directory in your home directory will not do, as far as I found out. Then, for each mbox file you created in the
first step, copy the file to /var/spool/mail/david if "david" is one of the known users on the mail system.
- Configure your mail client on the target machine to read the mail via POP from your Unix machine. You will usually
need to create an account and specify the POP server (your Unix machine) and the name / password for
the user account you want to use. If in the above step you are copying the files to the "david" mail spool,
you need to choose "david" as well in here. That's pretty simple, ain't it?
Then, tell your mail client to fetch the POP mail. Then, move your mail to the right organizational structures
(folders) in your mail tool and go back to the step before for another mail folder.
- In contrast to importing / smuggling mboxes into target applications such as Eudora, this will
preserve non-roman characters and attachments etc. in your mailboxes.
- If you get an error during the POP-fetch step, check your password and username. Make sure, the mail spool
file is readable (chmod!) by the according user. If the line breaks (CR/LF) are wrong (Windows style), qpopper 4.x will
respond with a POP error stating that the mbox file is corrupted.
- If you're using Entourage on OS X, quit the program after the above procedure and restart it with the Option (Alternate) key
pressed. Select "simple rebuild" and wait for a miracle. In my case, I also had to reboot the whole machine before Entourage would start within a few seconds (instead of minutes).
Entourage is beautiful, but slow...
Printers
If you have a printer that's not supported on the Mac (or one that simply
has a parallel connection), you can use it on your network on a Linux (or
Unix) print server as follows.
Here's how to access a printer based on CUPS from Win2k and OS X clients:
WINDOWS 2000 clients
Symptoms: I was unable to install an IPP printer on a Win2k client using the
"network printer" option and the URL "http://printserver:631/printers/lp"
(lp is the printer in question). (cups 1.1.14)
Solution: Create a printer class and put the printer in it. Then, install
driver for http://printserver:631/classes/class
As driver, the printer-specific driver can be installed.
(Thanks to Hale (hale@nospam.mail.com) for putting me on the right track!)
Solution for Mac OS X clients:
(Mac OS X 1.2)
Connect via LPD, not IPP.
On server, modify /etc/inetd.conf or /etc/xinetd.conf (depending on your
system). Add the following line:
printer stream tcp nowait lp /usr/lib/cups/daemon/cups-lpd cups-lpd -o
document-format=application/octet-stream
(one line, you might need to adapt the path name)
Besides, you need to enable raw processing in /etc/cups/mime.types:
application/octet-stream
and in mime.convs:
application/octet-stream application/vnd.cups-raw 0 -
They are commented out by default.
I don't know why this is needed, since the Mac will send a postscript file,
so it's not raw data at all.
Don't forget to restart inetd and cupsd. (On SuSE-based machines, rcinetd
and rccupsd; you may need to do rccupsd stop and rccupsd start instead of
"restart"!)
On OS X client, use Printer Manager to add a TCP/IP printer, hostname is
printserver (no port to be specified), give printer name as printing queue.
Select printer-specific PPD or "Generic".
Note: This will change in later versions of OS X due to Apple's licensing of
CUPS code.
Statement
I hope these hints helped you in converting your mailboxes. In case you still need help,
please have a look at appropriate news groups. I cannot assist you in converting your mailboxes, unless you are willing
to pay for my work...
May 2002, David Reitter
Product names in this document are registered trademarks owned by their respective owners :-)
This is a PRIVATE
help document with NO COMMERCIAL INTENT.
