Eudora and support for Eudora discontinued by vendor
QUALCOMM discontinued sales for Eudora on May 1st, 2007. As of October 31st, 2007 they no longer offer support for Eudora.
While Eudora will continue to function for those who are using it, any future problems that might arise with it, say as the result of a Windows or Mac OS update, will not be resolved
For this reason, IT Services recommends that users evaluate other email programs and make plans to migrate their existing mail to one of these programs.
The following pages are intended to help select a new email program, decide how best to configure it, and import old mail from Eudora to the new program. These instructions are written with technical support professionals or Expert Partners in mind. IT Services encourages end users to seek the assistance of their local technical support group with moving their mail. End users and support professionals can get assistance with this process from the IT Services help desk by submitting a HelpSU request.
These instructions will be revised over time as IT Services develops more information based on practice with doing these migrations. If you have experiences to share in migrating Eudora mail please let us know by submitting a HelpSU request.
Overview of the process
- Select a new email program and install it.
- Plan for mail stored on server.
- Configure your new email program and begin using it.
- Import old Eudora mail to your new program.
Selecting a new email program
Windows
IT Services recommends both Microsoft Outlook and Thunderbird. They both work well with our email infrastructure, but offer different advantages.
Outlook: The Integrated Email and Calendar service offers calendar support through Microsoft Outlook.
Outlook is included with Microsoft Office
Thunderbird: IMAP users will likely find Thunderbird offers better IMAP support than Outlook provides, including the ability to use Sent and Trash folders on the server.
Thunderbird is available as a free download from http://www.mozilla.com/
Macintosh
IT Services recommends OS X Mail.
Mail is included with the OS X operating system.
What about the open source Eudora?
When Qualcomm announced they were discontinuing the commercial version of Eudora an open source project was started to produce an email client based on the Thunderbird code that would have many of the features and user interface elements of Eudora. As of September 2007 the project has produced an early beta with limited features, and informal estimates put a fully realized version as being perhaps a year away. IT Services will continue to monitor this project but at this point we do not feel it is a viable choice.
Plan for mail stored on server
Historically most users have configured Eudora to use the POP protocol, which means Eudora downloads mail from the server to their local hard drive where Eudora interacts with it. To allow for access from multiple computers or occasional access from Webmail it has become common practice for people to configure Eudora to leave mail on the server for a set period of time, typically anywhere from 7 to 30 days.
The potential problem this poses when switching to another email program is that if a user has Eudora set to store mail on the server for, say, 30 days and then switches over to their new program, that new program will then download all 30 days of stored messages into the Inbox.
That user will then import the Eudora mail into the new program and likely have a high percentage of duplicates during that 30 day period. In most cases the messages will be in different folders, but for some users the duplicates will be undesirable.
Some different options to avoid this problem include:
- Prior
to switching programs, change Eudora's settings so it is no longer
saving mail on the server and then have the user check mail with
Eudora. That should clear out the messages stored on the server (this
can be verified by having the user logon to http://webmail.stanford.edu
to verify the Inbox is now empty).
- After doing the first download of mail into the new
program have the user immediately clear out the Inbox, deleting all but
the newest messages (anything not downloaded into Eudora). After mail
is imported from Eudora the contents of the Eudora inbox can then be
moved into the new program's inbox.
- Use Webmail to move all messages in the Inbox to another IMAP folder. Since the POP protocol only downloads mail from the Inbox no duplicates should be downloaded by the new program. They will be stored in the user's IMAP space should the user wish to access them for any reason.
Switch to the new email program and begin using it
Switch to IMAP?
When switching to a new program, POP users may want to consider whether they want to switch to using the IMAP protocol with their new program and take advantage of the benefits IMAP provides, including the ability to easily access mail from multiple locations and automated daily backups. With Eudora, switching to IMAP involved a significantly different user experience. With OS X Mail or Thunderbird the user experience is nearly identical whether one is using POP or IMAP.
Configuration instructions
Once you've selected a new email program, installed it and decided how you'd like to configure it, see Configuring Your Email Program for the necessary instructions. Users can then begin using the new program to read new messages.
Importing existing Eudora Mail into the new program
There are a variety of options for importing mail from Eudora into any of the three recommended email programs. The various options differ in terms of complexity, cost (some third party utilities need to be purchased) and, most importantly, in the results they produce. Some key factors in looking at the end results of the imported mail include:
- Attachments: Eudora was unique in that it separated attachments from the messages and stored them in a separate location. Outlook Thunderbird and OS X Mail all store attachments along with the messages and so one evaluation point for a conversion process is whether it properly re-integrates attachments.
- Message status: Is the status (read, unread, replied to, forwarded, etc.) of the imported messages reflected?
- HTML Email: Messages with html and graphics often do not render properly after conversion.
After trying a particular procedure to import mail the user should look at the results and if there are problems in these areas or any others the user can't live with then another method can be tried.
Migrating IMAP users
For users who have been using Eudora configured for IMAP and have all of their mail stored in IMAP folders, migrating to another program is as simple as configuring the new program (see Configuring Your Email Program) to also use IMAP. The mail on the server will immediately be available.
IMAP users who have also archived some mail into local folders will want to use these instructions to move those local folders to their new mail program.
Using IMAP to migrate mail
A good, if tedious method of migrating mail from Eudora to another email program is to use IMAP. An overview of the process is as follows:
- Configure Eudora to use the IMAP protocol, if it is not already.
- Copy all local mail from local folders into IMAP folders.
- Configure your new email program for IMAP.
- You should now have access to all of your mail. For IMAP users who would like to re-archive some of that mail into local folders, copy the folders in question from the mail server to a local folder. For POP users, move all IMAP folders to local folders and then reconfigure the program to use the POP protocol.
Advantages of this method are that Eudora will re-insert attachments into the message during upload and message status should be preserved.
The disadvantage is that it is a tedious process. Unfortunately Eudora will not allow you to move entire mailboxes to the IMAP server — to move a folder you need to create a folder by the same name on the IMAP server, then copy all of the messages from the local folder to that IMAP folder. Furthermore, users with a lot of local mail will likely quickly fill their 3 GB email quota and be forced to run through this procedure in several steps to get all of the mail moved over.
