60. Import Mailboxes from Another Email Application BEFORE YOU BEGIN 54 Configure a New Mail Account Mail isn't the only email application out there for Mac OS X. True, it's one of the best, and it's certainly the one that's best integrated into the operating system and the one that's most enthusiastically under development. More and more Mac userseven the old-time expertsare discovering Mail and falling in love with its straightforward approach to configuration and its intuitive integration of advanced features. However, nearly every new Mac user has used some email program before in her life, and that means there's a lot of mail built up inside whatever email application the person previously used. The Mail application provides the capability to import mailboxes from any of a number of different popular email applications: Microsoft Entourage or Outlook Express, Eudora, Netscape, Claris Emailer, or even bare Unix-style "mbox" files. All you have to do is tell Mail where to find these mailbox files, and it will reformat them into its own Mailboxes list so that you can continue using all your archived mail. NOTE Sadly, Mail does not support importing mailboxes from America Online accounts. 60. Import Mailboxes from Another Email Application 1. | Import Mailboxes Select File , Import Mailboxes from the main Mail menu. The first page of the Import dialog box sequence appears. | 2. | Select the Other Mail Application Select the email application you used before switching to Mail . This is the email application that contains the mailboxes you want to salvage. After you select the appropriate radio button, explanatory text appears telling you what the next step in importing the mailboxes will be. For some email applications, Mail will launch the other application to drive the mailbox conversion itself; for others, you are simply told where the mailbox files for that application are probably located. Open a Finder window and navigate to that location to check whether the mailbox files are there, and then click the Continue button in the lower right of the Import dialog box to begin the import process. NOTE Some email applications, such as Netscape, exist on multiple platforms. If you are coming from Windows and want to import your Windows Netscape mailboxes into Mail, you might find that your mailboxes are corrupted after they are imported. This can be the result of the line-break characters in text files being different in Windows and Mac OS X. To solve this problem, a text formatting utility such as Linebreak Converter X by Josh Aas might be useful (go to http://maccrafters.com/lbc/). Use this program to convert the mailbox files from Windows to Unix format before you import them into Mail. | 3. | Select the Location of the Mailbox Files In the navigation sheet that appears, go to the location of the mailbox files you want to import; select the folder that contains the mailbox files and click Choose . If Mail launched the other email application instead of giving you the navigation sheet, follow the instructions on-screen for importing the mailboxes from the given application. | 4. | Choose What to Import Mail's importer script can import items such as contacts, calendar items, and other pieces of information as well as simply mailboxes (if the other mail application supports these features). However, in most cases, all you will be able to import are mailboxes, which appear in the Items to Import list in the next screen. Select the check boxes on the mailboxes you wish to import, and then click Continue . Mail then imports the mailboxes, and they appear under the On My Mac icon in the Mailboxes pane. You can now reorganize the mailboxes according to your taste, moving your old messages into your new mailbox hierarchy, or leaving them where they are. | |