Post by thread:[OT] Help me save my email please

I've been running on webmail for the past few years (long, but valid story), and now I need to download and keep all of it. Roughly just under 2GB over 3 email accounts. I used to download to a Linux box, but that's full and I don't have that machine at hand currently. So I setup Thunderbird (as it uses the same maildir format, so I should be able to merge later) using POP3, but it hangs after some time, and can't continue. Out of ~7000 emails in one account, it hangs about half-way. I'm ideally after an email client (for Windows XP), that uses maildir format, which is either very reliable (and will retry, check for errors, etc) or better... will allow me to download by specific date ranges. This way, I can grab a few months at a time and let it delete those as it goes along. Or if any of you have any better (simple) ideas? Cheers, -Neil.

At 07:59 PM 3/21/2012, PICdude wrote: >I'm ideally after an email client (for Windows XP), that uses maildir >format, which is either very reliable (and will retry, check for >errors, etc) or better... will allow me to download by specific date >ranges. This way, I can grab a few months at a time and let it delete >those as it goes along. I have to confess that I know almost nothing about the internals of email clients, but I've been using Eudora since I first got Internet access back in the mid '80s. All I can say about Eudora is that "It Just Works". It supports both IMAP and POP3 (I use POP3) and has worked on every Windows OS that I've used: 3.11 WFWG, Win98, WinXP, Win7. It hasn't been updated in years but you can still download the installer from <http://www.eudora.com>. It might be worth trying. dwayne -- Dwayne Reid <spam_OUTdwaynerTakeThisOuTplanet.eon.net> Trinity Electronics Systems Ltd Edmonton, AB, CANADA (780) 489-3199 voice (780) 487-6397 fax http://www.trinity-electronics.com Custom Electronics Design and Manufacturing

PICdude <picdude3 <at> narwani.org> writes: {Quote hidden}> > I've been running on webmail for the past few years (long, but valid > story), and now I need to download and keep all of it. Roughly just > under 2GB over 3 email accounts. > > I used to download to a Linux box, but that's full and I don't have > that machine at hand currently. So I setup Thunderbird (as it uses > the same maildir format, so I should be able to merge later) using > POP3, but it hangs after some time, and can't continue. Out of ~7000 > emails in one account, it hangs about half-way. > > I'm ideally after an email client (for Windows XP), that uses maildir > format, which is either very reliable (and will retry, check for > errors, etc) or better... will allow me to download by specific date > ranges. This way, I can grab a few months at a time and let it delete > those as it goes along. > > Or if any of you have any better (simple) ideas? > > Cheers, > -Neil. > > I do not know if any Windows email client uses maildir format. If you are familiar with linux already, just install VMWare player, then install your favorite linux distro under virtual machine and download your emails. Sometimes webmail clients have option to download emails, check this out too. Sergey Dryga http://beaglerobotics.com

PICdude <picdude3 <at> narwani.org> writes: {Quote hidden}> > I've been running on webmail for the past few years (long, but valid > story), and now I need to download and keep all of it. Roughly just > under 2GB over 3 email accounts. > > I used to download to a Linux box, but that's full and I don't have > that machine at hand currently. So I setup Thunderbird (as it uses > the same maildir format, so I should be able to merge later) using > POP3, but it hangs after some time, and can't continue. Out of ~7000 > emails in one account, it hangs about half-way. > > I'm ideally after an email client (for Windows XP), that uses maildir > format, which is either very reliable (and will retry, check for > errors, etc) or better... will allow me to download by specific date > ranges. This way, I can grab a few months at a time and let it delete > those as it goes along. > > Or if any of you have any better (simple) ideas? > > Cheers, > -Neil. > > other note: I use Evolution for email, when I switched to it from KMail last year, it downloaded several GB of emails from 7-8 accounts without problems, using POP3. Of course the problem is likely in your server, or ISP, not the client :-) Sergey Dryga

Can you in the WEBMAIL, or locally open another account, then forward or move to another account/folder to that new account batch style by selecting via. shift-click. On 3/21/2012 9:59 PM, PICdude wrote: {Quote hidden}> I've been running on webmail for the past few years (long, but valid > story), and now I need to download and keep all of it. Roughly just > under 2GB over 3 email accounts. > > I used to download to a Linux box, but that's full and I don't have > that machine at hand currently. So I setup Thunderbird (as it uses > the same maildir format, so I should be able to merge later) using > POP3, but it hangs after some time, and can't continue. Out of ~7000 > emails in one account, it hangs about half-way. > > I'm ideally after an email client (for Windows XP), that uses maildir > format, which is either very reliable (and will retry, check for > errors, etc) or better... will allow me to download by specific date > ranges. This way, I can grab a few months at a time and let it delete > those as it goes along. > > Or if any of you have any better (simple) ideas? > > Cheers, > -Neil. > >

Was not aware that Eudora still existed. Last I used it was early 90's-ish when it was free from several dial-up ISP's. Checking now though, it seems it's not maildir format :( I can supposedly convert from mbox to maildir or vice-versa later, but there are lots of issues with that and people often lose several emails with that. Quoting Dwayne Reid <.....dwaynerKILLspam@spam@planet.eon.net>: {Quote hidden}> At 07:59 PM 3/21/2012, PICdude wrote: > >> I'm ideally after an email client (for Windows XP), that uses maildir >> format, which is either very reliable (and will retry, check for >> errors, etc) or better... will allow me to download by specific date >> ranges. This way, I can grab a few months at a time and let it delete >> those as it goes along. > > I have to confess that I know almost nothing about the internals of > email clients, but I've been using Eudora since I first got Internet > access back in the mid '80s. All I can say about Eudora is that "It > Just Works". > > It supports both IMAP and POP3 (I use POP3) and has worked on every > Windows OS that I've used: 3.11 WFWG, Win98, WinXP, Win7. > > It hasn't been updated in years but you can still download the > installer from <http://www.eudora.com>. > > It might be worth trying. > > dwayne > > -- > Dwayne Reid <dwaynerKILLspamplanet.eon.net> > Trinity Electronics Systems Ltd Edmonton, AB, CANADA > (780) 489-3199 voice (780) 487-6397 fax > http://www.trinity-electronics.com > Custom Electronics Design and Manufacturing > >

Quoting Sergey Dryga <.....sergeyKILLspam.....dryga.us>: > I do not know if any Windows email client uses maildir format. If you are > familiar with linux already, just install VMWare player, then install your > favorite linux distro under virtual machine and download your emails. > Sometimes webmail clients have option to download emails, check this out too. Also thinking it may be the way to go right now. Or I could just setup Linux to dual-boot on one of my existing machines. So far, Thunderbird and Pegasus does maildir. Installed Pegasus last night and it downloaded 4800 emails before stopping. Have to think there's some internal limit with that cause it's just too cardinal of a number. It left all on the server though. Re-starting this morning resulted in a full restart. I clearly remember stopping kmail during its download from the same hosts and when restarted later it would continue from where it left off. It did delete the downloaded ones off the server in the interim. The Linux option is looking better and better now.

Quoting Sergey Dryga <EraseMEsergeyspam_OUTTakeThisOuTdryga.us>: > other note: I use Evolution for email, when I switched to it from KMail last > year, it downloaded several GB of emails from 7-8 accounts without problems, > using POP3. Of course the problem is likely in your server, or ISP, not the > client :-) > > Sergey Dryga > I don't doubt the host is some part of the problem. I've had a lot of issues with them in the past few months, and they recently decided that the best time to do backups is at 7am EST for a few hours. It literally takes me 15 mins (yes, literally) to get into my email in the morning, so I have to leave them anyway. But I must get my email first.

Quoting Carl Denk <cdenkspam_OUTwindstream.net>: > Can you in the WEBMAIL, or locally open another account, then forward or > move to another account/folder to that new account batch style by > selecting via. shift-click. Not a bad idea. Forwarding may be a problem, but I can prob use IMAP in Thunderbird to move all to another folder, then move back small batches to the inbox for download. Worth a shot.

Em 22/3/2012 10:48, PICdude escreveu: {Quote hidden}> Quoting Sergey Dryga <@spam@sergeyKILLspamdryga.us>: >> I do not know if any Windows email client uses maildir format. If you are >> familiar with linux already, just install VMWare player, then install your >> favorite linux distro under virtual machine and download your emails. >> Sometimes webmail clients have option to download emails, check this out too. > > Also thinking it may be the way to go right now. Or I could just > setup Linux to dual-boot on one of my existing machines. > > So far, Thunderbird and Pegasus does maildir. Installed Pegasus last > night and it downloaded 4800 emails before stopping. Have to think > there's some internal limit with that cause it's just too cardinal of > a number. It left all on the server though. Re-starting this morning > resulted in a full restart. > > I clearly remember stopping kmail during its download from the same > hosts and when restarted later it would continue from where it left > off. It did delete the downloaded ones off the server in the interim. > The Linux option is looking better and better now. Thunderbird supports IMAP. Although IMAP clients usually don't download the messages until they are read, Thunderbird does. With IMAP it won't restart from beginning in case of an interruption and a restart. In POP3 mode, Thunderbird has a bug that sometimes messages with large attachments are downloaded over and over creating several copies of it in the list, without Thunderbird marking them as already downloaded and it also doesn't download any messages other than that. It happened today to me. The only solution was to access the webmail server and deleting the offending message. Isaac

On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 9:59 PM, PICdude <KILLspampicdude3KILLspamnarwani.org> wrote: > > I used to download to a Linux box, but that's full and I don't have > that machine at hand currently. Â So I setup Thunderbird (as it uses > the same maildir format, so I should be able to merge later) using > POP3, but it hangs after some time, and can't continue. Â Out of ~7000 > emails in one account, it hangs about half-way. Maybe a useful hint: A Maildir just contains each email in a separate text file, with any number of folders. If I were doing this I might try remailing each email to my new account. Or converting the emails into a format. The `find` utility can run a command for each file it finds. Also it works just fine under Cygwin on Windows.. The simplest, least elegant, solution would be to copy (rsync over SSH) your maildir to a working system and use the IMAP server of that working system, to download to your email client. I've used Thunderbird forever, but lately it's been getting quite bloated. I've been evaluating the Opera email client for my own use. It's quite fast, though the interface takes some getting used to. -- Martin K.

PICdude <picdude3 <at> narwani.org> writes: > I clearly remember stopping kmail during its download from the same > hosts and when restarted later it would continue from where it left > off. It did delete the downloaded ones off the server in the interim. > The Linux option is looking better and better now. > KMail has an option to leave messages on the server, it's in account options IIRC. Sergey Dryga http://beaglerobotics.com

Quoting Sergey Dryga <RemoveMEsergeyTakeThisOuTdryga.us>: > PICdude <picdude3 <at> narwani.org> writes: > >> I clearly remember stopping kmail during its download from the same >> hosts and when restarted later it would continue from where it left >> off. It did delete the downloaded ones off the server in the interim. >> The Linux option is looking better and better now. >> > KMail has an option to leave messages on the server, it's in account > options IIRC. Most do have this option, but I was referring to kmail deleting each message as it went along, vs. waiting to download the full set, then deleting the full set. The latter is what's causing me problems.

If you can access the email through IMAP, you _might_ be able to download the email into local folders and delete it from the server. As you will be initiating the process you can select only as many messages as you will successfully download (regardless of the source of error) and then when you confirm they are downloaded, delete only the selected messages. Your client _should_ give you the option of copying between accounts as well (incase you are trying to consolidate accounts) Although you want to save it to MailDir format, Outlook can achieve this so I would expect all clients to be capable of it. On 2012-03-22 11:40, PICdude wrote: {Quote hidden}> Quoting Sergey Dryga <spamBeGonesergeyspamBeGonedryga.us>: > >> PICdude <picdude3 <at> narwani.org> writes: >> >>> I clearly remember stopping kmail during its download from the same >>> hosts and when restarted later it would continue from where it left >>> off. It did delete the downloaded ones off the server in the >>> interim. >>> The Linux option is looking better and better now. >>> >> KMail has an option to leave messages on the server, it's in account >> options IIRC. > > Most do have this option, but I was referring to kmail deleting each > message as it went along, vs. waiting to download the full set, then > deleting the full set. The latter is what's causing me problems.

On 03/21/2012 09:59 PM, PICdude wrote: > Or if any of you have any better (simple) ideas? > > Cheers, > -Neil. I know that you need this for windows, but if you follow someone else's suggestion of running a unix on a VM, you can give a try with fetchmail, mbsync, offlineimap among others, if your email client (mutt,thunderbird,etc) is not able to download all of it. I'm a fan of dovecot's dsync, but you need ssh access on the imap server. Cheers, Nuno -- http://slug.aeminium.org

As I recall, when you are running Thunderbird you can import your emails one user at a time. Don't use the backup on TBird from the menu, last I tried it, it was not ready for prime time! Use the Mozzilla back up, it works fine to do either partial or full profile back ups. The backup files are in plain ascii. I have not yet started but it looks like a simple list processing program could remove the header junk and leave the relevant information to save quite a lot of chaff from the ASCII files. Try it, it is free, quick & easy! On 3/21/2012 9:59 PM, PICdude wrote: {Quote hidden}> I've been running on webmail for the past few years (long, but valid > story), and now I need to download and keep all of it. Roughly just > under 2GB over 3 email accounts. > > I used to download to a Linux box, but that's full and I don't have > that machine at hand currently. So I setup Thunderbird (as it uses > the same maildir format, so I should be able to merge later) using > POP3, but it hangs after some time, and can't continue. Out of ~7000 > emails in one account, it hangs about half-way. > > I'm ideally after an email client (for Windows XP), that uses maildir > format, which is either very reliable (and will retry, check for > errors, etc) or better... will allow me to download by specific date > ranges. This way, I can grab a few months at a time and let it delete > those as it goes along. > > Or if any of you have any better (simple) ideas? > > Cheers, > -Neil. > -- John Ferrell W8CCW Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example. Mark Twain (1835 - 1910), Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894)

Well I was able to get somewhere with this. I was out of town for the past few days and had a faster internet connection. Using the webmail interface, I moved all mail in an email account to a temporary folder, then moved 500 messages at a time back to the inbox and POP3'ed it over to Thunderbird. Took time, but it got done for accounts with 7000, 26000 and 11000 messages. I'm back to my average-speed account, but only have one more account with ~4700 messages, so hopefully it'll be okay. Thanks for the help guys. Cheers, -Neil. On 3/26/2012 12:03 AM, TakeThisOuTeye_of_horusEraseMEspam_OUTearthlink.net wrote: {Quote hidden}> Hi, > > Message: 20 > Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2012 06:48:40 -0700 > From: PICdude<RemoveMEpicdude3TakeThisOuTnarwani.org> > Subject: Re: [OT] Help me save my email please > To: piclistEraseME.....mit.edu > Message-ID:<20120322064840.29855v80qoifovqw@http://www.narwani.org> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; DelSp="Yes"; > format="flowed" > >> Installed Pegasus last night and it downloaded 4800 emails before >> stopping. Have to think there's some internal limit with that cause it's >> just too cardinal of number. It left all on the server though. > I've been using Pegasus for over 25 years, and frequently I download > really large numbers of e-mails, last time was 7500. If your e-mail is > terminating, it is likely due to connection time-out 'retry' setting being > too short. Also, if your e-mail is has not been deleted from your (ISP?) > e-mail server, its again due to a setting. Most servers will not delete > until there has been a fully successful download event, although in > Pegasus you can change that setting if you want. > > Good luck.. > > >