Eudora to Exchange

From Provider Notes

For more information about ISC's Exchange Service, visit the Provider Web at [1].

Contents 1 Introduction 2 Important Notes 2.1 A few caveats: 3 Organize Eudora Email and Consider Increasing Quotas 4 Preparing & Backing Up Eudora 5 Completing The Migration To Outlook

Introduction

These instructions work whether your email is configured for IMAP or POP. If you have an IMAP configuration, and store the majority of your messages on the server, then the actual import of information into Exchange will take significantly less time than for users that have the majority of their mail stored locally.

The strategy outlined below does not use third party software; however, testers have had success with using software such as Aid4Mail (http://www.aid4mail.com) which does a good job maintaining attachments. ISC has purchased a limited site license for Aid4Mail - more information is located on the Aid4Mail Provider Tools Page

The method below strives to retain a similar mailbox configuration from the user's perspective in Exchange as they have today using Eudora. This method involves configuring Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007 or Entourage 2004 for both the POBOX Classic and ISC Exchange accounts. Basically, the strategy is to use Eudora to upload all messages (even those currently stored locally) onto the POBOX Classic server and then to use Outlook or Entourage to copy them to the appropriate folders both on the Exchange Server and locally to meet the users' needs.

Important Notes

• These instructions make the assumption that the user wishes to mirror their existing mail structure in Outlook, by continuing to store local folders locally and by migrating those currently stored on the POBOX server to the Exchange server.
• These instructions make the assumption that Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007, or Entourage has already been installed, updated, and configured for POBOX Exchange. For configuration instructions, see:

How to Configure Outlook 2003 for Exchange, or How to Configure Outlook 2007 for Exchange, or How to Configure Entourage 2004 for Exchange

A few caveats:

• Eudora (Mac OS) filters are imported correctly as local, client-side rules in Entourage, but not as server-side Exchange rules. Any server-side rules need to be entered manually.
• Migration of Eudora (Windows) filters has not been tested and may not work.
• Signature files will not migrate correctly and must be re-created. Use copy & paste to re-create your signatures in Outlook or Entourage.
• For Mac OS, contacts are typically stored in the Address Book application. Migration of contacts to the Exchange server is typically handled by turning on Sync Services within Entourage 2004. Instructions for this process will be handled in a separate article.
• Issues have been reported with migrating attachments successfully. It is for this reason that users may want to consider keeping Eudora files in tact and using the Eudora client to access older mail and only migrating the newest mail to Outlook and Entourage.

Organize Eudora Email and Consider Increasing Quotas

1. Organize the email in Eudora and delete old email that will never be needed.
2. Compact mailboxes (from the Special menu, choose Compact Mailboxes for all mailboxes)
3. Consider having the email administrator temporarily bump up the POBOX Classic and ISC Exchange quotas, until all the mail is in its new position (in general, depending on email and attachment sizes, 4,000 emails use approximately 100 MB, so 40,000 emails would be approximately 1.0 GB) in accordance with the amount of email you intend to transfer.

Preparing & Backing Up Eudora

1. Make sure that the client's email is fully synced with the POBOX Classic server and that the current folders are up to date.
2. Make a full backup of the Eudora folder
   1. For Windows, see http://www.eudora.com/techsupport/kb/1602hq.html
   2. For Mac, see http://eudora.com/techsupport/kb/1655hq.html
3. It is assumed that most users will want to migrate all mail to Outlook. However, for ease of transition, some users may be ok with retaining very old mail, which is accessed rarely, in Eudora and will continue to use Eudora on occasion to access those local folders. It has been reported that there are issues with successfully migrating attachments in Eudora, since they are stored in a separate folder. Links/pointers to attachments may become broken in the migration process. The decision of how much mail to migrate will need to be a user by user, local decision.
   1. Take stock of the users quantity of mail, and as noted above, bump up quotas on POBOX Classic and ISC Exchange accounts as necessary to accommodate all the user's mail that they want to access using Outlook. If they have more than 1 GB of mail, you will need to do the process outlined below as many times as necessary to accommodate all of their files.
   2. Create a folder on the POBOX Classic server called "local" (or similar). (POP users will first need to create an IMAP connection on POBOX Classic to store the files.)
   3. For mail in Eudora local folders that they want to access with the Outlook client, copy the local folders to the newly created "local" folder on the POBOX Classic server. When copying/pasting the mail, retain the local folder structure on POBOX Classic. Note that even after bumping up the quota, if there is still too much mail in Local Folders to move at one time, this will be an iterative process. After completing the steps below (i.e. downloading mail to either Outlook archives or placing it on the Exchange server), this step will need to be repeated for the additional mail.
4. If applicable, leave the remainder (that which the user does not want to access from the Outlook client) in local folders in Eudora and compact all mailboxes (from the Special menu, choose Compact Mailboxes for all mailboxes). Create another back up of the remaining mail in the Eudora folder. (see instructions in step 1 above.)
5. Quit Eudora.

Completing The Migration To Outlook

As stated above, these instructions assume Outlook or Entourage has already been configured for ISC Exchange.

1. Run Outlook’s auto-archive feature (File > Archive ... > Inbox and click the OK button). This will set up a local data store within the Outlook client, which will be used to hold all the local folders being migrated from Thunderbird.
2. Configure Outlook or Entourage to connect to the user's account on POBOX Classic using IMAP (see instructions for Outlook 2007 or Outlook 2003).
3. Expand both the POBOX Classic and ISC Exchange mailboxes.
4. For the folders in the "local" folder, move the mail from POBOX Classic to Outlook’s archive folder (created in Step 1 above), by dragging and dropping folders from the POBOX Classic account to the Archive folder. This will put the mail in a local folder rather than storing it on the Exchange server. Dragging and dropping the folders will move them from one account to the other; it will not copy them. If you wish to copy a folder, right-click it and select Copy and then the location you wish it to be copied to.
5. For folders that are created by default by Outlook (i.e. Inbox, Sent and Drafts) manually copy the contents of the POBOX Classic IMAP folders to their Exchange equivalents. Also copy all folders that the user has created on the POBOX Classic server and put a copy in their Exchange mailbox. It is important to move these folders directly from POBOX Classic to the Exchange folder to preserve time stamps. Anything passed to a personal folder and then to the Exchange server will lose original time/date stamps.
6. After moving, launch Eudora and delete (if applicable--depends on whether you copied or moved) the mail in the "local" folder and compact the IMAP store. (Do not delete the standard folders like Inbox and Sent).
7. If the client has additional email in Eudora local folders to migrate, copy those folders up to the "local" folder on the POBOX Classic server and continue until all email is migrated. (See step 5 above)
8. After all mail is migrated, remove the POBOX Classic account from Outlook. This does not delete the POBOX account, but rather just removes access to it from the Outlook client. To accomplish this, in Outlook select Options in the Tools menu. On the Mail Setup Tab, click Email Accounts. Highlight the POBOX account and click Remove.
9. After all the mail is successfully migrated, send a series of test messages to and from the account to verify that that routing is working appropriately and that mail is being stored in desired folders.
10. After a reasonable time to establish that all is well with the migration, delete the POBOX Classic account from Eudora, unless the user still has old mail stored there solely. As an alternative, deactivate the automatic Send and Receive capability within Eudora and retain the locally stored information.