Synchronize email on two computers running Eudora

Please read carefully what I've already stated:

"I have setup Eudora on both machines to "leave the email on the server" but this does not always work. (I have 5 different email accounts, some work but the others don't.)"

You see, some ISPs will not leave the email on the server no matter how you setup your email software. They simply delete all downloaded messages the instant they are successfully received by the client computer.

And this does not solve the problem of writing a new message on one of the machines and getting a copy onto the other.

And this will not help with organizing older messages from the past.

What is needed, I suppose, is a stand-alone program that will look at all of the *.mbx files from two diferent machines running Eudora and then merge the missing messages from one to the other.

We have two full-time programmers working here at my company and they have the ability to put together such a utility...but unless there is some commercial value in doing it, I doubt it will ever happen here.

Any other suggestions?

If you get the mail from an ISP, and it doesn't keep the mails on the server, I don't think Eudora can change it.

What you can try to do is ask to make a second mail account on the other pc and let the mails be forwarded to the second pc, that way you will always have the mail on the two machines.

jvuz,

I have tried that already. But because the laptop may not be used for up to two weeks, I have lost many emails simply because the mail server only attempts to send and then resend the message a predetermined number of times.

I've been working on this for over a two months now and have tried almost every conceivable export/import routine and nothing works to combine the messages correctly in the various mailboxes. Instead, I get a lot of copies (duplicates) of each message and since I have over 5,000 emails from the past 7 years I think the only answer is to find or code a program to synchronize email.

I have spoken to others about this and they all have the same problem when using two computers and/or when switching ISPs or changing email programs.

I find it hard to beleive that someone has not found a way to do this.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Sorry I couldn't help. I hope someone on this forum can.

I'm guessing you're picking up email via POP3. Personally, I'd find a provider who supports IMAP, and use that - IMAP+Eudora does what you're trying to do, and does it extremely well. POP3 really isn't designed to do what you're asking of it, and you're also asking your provider to keep copies of all email, forever - in general, ISPs consider it fair game to erase mails that have been downloaded after a week or so.

IMAP, on the other hand, is designed to do this - it's designed to handle the case where you move between machines, and possibly email clients. It'll track which emails you've read, give you multiple folders, etc. All very simply, because you're not synchronizing between your desktop and your laptop anymore, but between each computer and the IMAP server - your mail "lives" on that, you just use a copy. There are plenty of good IMAP providers around, and they're generally much better geared up towards holding vast quantities of email for you.

Alternately, and this is what I do, you can run your own IMAP server on a Linux box, and feed it with fetchmail off the existing POP3 accounts - assuming you have DSL or something at your office, it'll work great, be accessible from anywhere, and it's easy to put a webmail interface on top of it. You can even run an ACAP server, and get full autoconfiguration if you like.

Dave.

Thanks Dave,

I already know all about IMAP-Eudora and we have an in-house linux based mail server running IMAP, but that does not answer the biggest problem.  As I mentioned before, synchronizing older email. (Which of course will work to fix the other problems like accessing the same POP3 accounts at various times from different machines.)

A quote from my original post:

"I've tried many different "tricks" like importing all mail from both machines to Outlook, so that I could re-import it back to Eudora, but I've always ended up with a big mess. I've searched the web for weeks and can find no program that will do even simple synchronizing for Eudora. I have over 400 megs of email from the past 7 years (using Netscape and Outlook at times) and really need to get it all on one machine and organized."

I have spoken to other small business types who need more than one email address if for no other reason than to have a spam-free address and/or one for each department/project. And they too have an office machine and a laptop...and like me, they are pulling their hair out trying to keep their emails organized.

For example, in my case I have an account just for web based merchants, an account for dealing with quotes (I'm in charge of purchasing) an account for in-house communication, etc. for a total of six accounts with 3 outside ISPs and three on our in-house server (and those three get over 5,000 spam hits per day). And with the outside ISPs the IMAP option is not available.

We have two linux experts on staff and they have the talent to write such a program...but at a cost of over $40 per hour, it could get very expensive.

We are not in the business of producing commercial software, but maybe it is something we should look into.

Again thanks for the suggestions, BV

Oke maybe this don't apply to your question, but still maybe you can use it.

We sometimes have the problem that all our email is downloaded again from the server. so eudora doesn't register what it downloaded and what not. When we make sure that there's no email on the server anymore we delete the LMOS.dat file in the eudora directory and then the leave mail on server works oke again.
Hope this can help you.

Kcid

In direct answer to that quote:

1) The program exists, really. It's called an IMAP server.

2) The multiple POP3 accounts can be handled directly and solely by the existing Linux IMAP server, using a free program called 'fetchmail', effectively transforming them into IMAP accounts or folders, for the individual client machines to access centrally and safely.

3) That 400M of mail might be directly understandable by your existing IMAP server - UWIMAP can do this, for instance, I think. Alternatively, you can use a program to upload all the email on each machine to the IMAP server - Eudora itself would be an example of such a program.

Personally, I'd actually write my own program to upload the messages, in order to eliminate duplicates early on. I expect this would be in the order of two or three hours of programming, probably less.

In other words, *do* get your mail all on one machine. An IMAP server, though, not one of the clients.

At the moment, you're using POP3/UID support, which itself is a hack to try to get some IMAP-like support out of POP3.

You've understandably run into problems, and you're intending to solve these by writing software to implement another hack, effectively trying to write another portion of an IMAP server, this time on the client machines.

My solution would also mean you could use smaller memory sticks.

cschleter
Chris,
Your solution sounds interesting, but you do not make it clear if one is to place the mailboxes/attachments in a directory on a network drive, on the memory stick, or do you mean to place them in a sub-directory of the Eudora program directory of each machine?

Also what about the .toc files and do you have any problems with the deudora.ini file, as it "points" to the working directory when Eudora is started???

Anyway, for now I have installed just one copy of Eudora on a Linksys "network attached storage box" drive and placed a Shortcut pointing to the drive on the Desktop of each machine. This works fine, altough the program is a bit slower to react and you need to shut it down before running it on the other machine. (Eudora warns you and offers the option to shut down the other running program, when it is started on another machine.)

 Now I need to work out a solution to get back to the Linksys drive from outside the building.

I have my Eudora mailbox, toc, attachment, log, etc. files in a directory called Eudora (not a subdirectory of the program folder) on my data drive on each machine.  The DataFolder item in deudora.ini is set to point to that directory.  I just copy the entire content of the Eudora data directory (as described above) between machines and everything stays in sync.  Note that I only check mail from one machine at any given time, though.  You could put the data files on a network drive, as well, and use multiple clients to access it; however, I think you are going to have the problem of only being able to use one client at a time.  

My solution is useful for doing a sync between my desktop and notebook when I come and go.

I have just joined experts-exchange.   After struggling with the duplicate emails issue.  I wrote a program (tentatively named Dupe-killer) to solve this problem.  This program is able to eliminate all duplicate emails within a single Eudora mailbox.    

Here's how it works:

The entire mailbox is searched for duplicates of every email.  A second mailbox is written which is the simply the contents of the orginal mailxbox, minus all duplicate emails.  For safety, your original mailox is retained  and the new mailbox is the one with the dupes removed.  Ie.  If you are eliminating duplicates in "Inbox",  the original Inbox becomes "Inbox-bkp" and the old Inbox is replaced by a new one with the duplicate emails removed.

I have tested the program on a number of large Eudora mailboxes and so far it works quite well.  At the request of a Linux-based friend I have even added the capability of handling Mailboxes imported from Linux/Unix-based email programs such as PINE.  

There is one thing still missing from this program:  So far the program acts only on the Eudora mailbox itself but does not re-sync the corresponding .toc (Eudora "Table of Contents" file). .  As the program stands now it will eliminate duplicates but your email status info. would be lost.  That means you would lose the "replied to" "read/unread" fields.    I believe it is not acceptable to lose this status info. so  I am working on incorporating this feature into the program.    

I plan to make this program available to Experts-Exchange members when it is ready. After it has been rigorously tested I plan to make it available to the wider community as freeware.

It would be nice to have a few people willing to test the program.  Because the program first backs up your mailbox, and does not modify the original mailbox, no harm will come to your email!  I'd like to hear from people interested in this project.  Please let me know you have any suggestions for features that you would like to see included.   Suggestions for a name for this program are also welcome.