Eudora 7.1.0.9 paid mode: can I migrate everything to Outlook?
Solved Email & Outlook
AJ
Andrew Jackson
April 28, 2017
2 replies
4,590 views
Reviewed by moderators

Still running Eudora 7.1.0.9 in paid mode, over a decade of mail. Time to finally move to Outlook 2016.

Can everything come across: folders, attachments and the address book? And does paid versus sponsored mode change anything for migration?

Accepted Answer
Verified by Edwin J. Hoffer, Email Systems Specialist ยท Reviewed April 2017

Paid mode changes nothing for migration, the mode only controlled ads and features while running. On disk every Eudora edition stores mail the same way and that is what matters.

Your mail sits in the Eudora data folder as .mbx files, one per mailbox, which are mbox format with Eudora quirks. The big quirk is attachments: Eudora strips them out of messages and parks them in a separate Attach folder, leaving a local path reference in the message body.

A converter that understands Eudora specifically, SysTools MBX Converter for instance, reads the .mbx files, follows those attachment references into the Attach folder and reinserts the files into the converted messages, then writes PST. A generic mbox tool converts the mail fine but leaves you with attachment references pointing at dead paths.

The address book is separate: in Eudora export it via Tools, Address Book, then File, Save As to get a text export, reshape it into CSV with Name and Email columns and import into Outlook through the Import/Export wizard. Ten minutes of work for a decade of contacts is a fair trade.

Migrated 34 mailboxes with attachments intact, spot checked a 2009 message and its zip opened fine. Address book took a little CSV massaging but all 400 contacts are in. Farewell Eudora.