Mr Mail2Entourage ReadMe

This application is used to transfer Address Book entries and Mail messages organized in mailboxes from the Mac OS X Mail.app to Microsoft Entourage v.X or Entourage 2004. See below for instructions.

Registration

Mr Mail2Entourage is "donation-ware". Feel free to use it. If you liked the program please contribute a dollar or two (or five) to PayPal account balooba@earthlink.net. The URL is https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=balooba@earthlink.net . No pressure.

Feel free to distribute the app as you want for non-commercial purposes and as long as you include this ReadMe file. Please send an email to mail2ent@balooba.se if you have questions.

Why would one need Mr Mail2Entourage?

Mail.app is the great email program that comes for free with Mac OS X. One annoying lack of features is the difficulty in exporting mail to other client software. This makes it hard to even evaluate other programs such as Entourage. If you want to start using Entourage and have a need to get all your previous mails transferred you might want to try Mr Mail2Entourage. There are probably other droplets, programs, and descriptions on how to accomplish the task of mailbox Export/Import between Mail.app and Entourage. If you manage without this application, well, congratulations! If you manage thanks to this applications, congratulations too.

Features in version 0.94

Major update. Mailboxes are converted faster. The window can behave like normal or stay floating on top of other running apps, which is useful for those with smaller displays. After all it requires both Mail and Entourage to be open. Application can now be quit by pressing cmd+Q. Several fixes, now accepts mailboxes with multiple punctuations (thanks Versiontracker feedback!). And finally, a new icon.

Features in version 0.93

Included support for transferring entries from Apple's Address Book. The UI now produces a ".vcf" formatted Contact into the Export Box. This Contact can then be dragged into Entourage (or in fact to any application that will accept it).

Features in version 0.91 and 0.92

The application was written in one go and has only one feature, conversion of a Mail.app format mailbox into a format that Entourage can accept. The UI supports direct drag and drop between the two mail clients. Version 0.92 fixes a bug with a redundant box. This version was not officially announced but was uploaded to the download server.

Installation and uninstallation

Drag the folder with the application to anywhere you want. To remove it, simply trash the folder. This deletes every trace of Mr Mail2Entourage.

Where to get it

When you read this there might be a newer version available. Check out http://homepage.mac.com/petber/balooba.html

Instructions

1. Launch Mail and Entourage. Move around the windows so you can perform obstacle-free  dragging.
2. Locate the place in Entourage where you want your mailboxes to be seated. Typically you click "Mail" and look under "On My Mac".
3. Launch Mr Mail2Entourage. You will be presented with a window containing an empty drop-box. By default this window will "float" on top of everything else. You can turn this feature off if you want.
4. Find a mailbox in Mail.app and drag it into the empty drop-box. The file will automatically be converted and a processed mailbox file will be displayed in a lower export-box.
5. Drag the new mailbox into an appropriate location in Entourage
6. Repeat for all mailboxes

Tips on how to convert mailboxes

a. If your mailboxes have more than 20 characters the name will be truncated due to limitations in Entourage. Actually, Entourage can handle mailboxes with longer names once they are imported so you can correct the name manually.

b. Both Mail and Entourage can have mailboxes inside mailboxes. However, they are really separate items so you must import them individually. To make it easier to keep your organization, begin with the "mother folder" and then proceed with the subfolders.

c. You can only import mailboxes that are stored on the hard drive. This means that you must first download IMAP, Exchange and other mailboxes from the servers to your local machine. Do this by dragging the mailboxes to a local folder such as "On My Mac" (the default name in Mail). 

System requirements and bugs

The application was created to run under Mac OS X and version 0.94 was tested only on version 10.3.2. As of February 2004 this little application has no known bugs. Please report any bugs, complaints, applause et c to the email address below. The program comes with no guarantees whatsoever but it beats me how anyone could use Mr Mail2Entourage to cause any harm.

Subtitles

The program was created in REALbasic®.

Mr Mail2Entourage is ©2001-2004 Peter Berglund, Balooba Software, mail2ent@balooba.se