Manually Sorting Through Mail Data File
Greetings, I have a mail account that I need to go through manually because it is no longer in service. I can go through it because it looks like the messages are just in one huge text file one after another. Is there a program out there that will take that file and convert it into individual emails so I can sift through them by subject?
This may be a simple answer, but I haven't messed around with mail data files and I haven't been able to find a program that can do it. Thanks for any assistance.
Greg K posted this at 04:49 — 4th September 2006.
He has: 2,145 posts
Joined: Nov 2003
what OS is it on? if it is a linux/unix system, you should be able to go to the directory with the mail file and do elm -f filename to launch the elm mail client and force it to use the file specified instead of your default user account mail file
On windows, i'm not sure but worth a try. Get eudora (eudora.com) and set it up. COPY the mail file into whereever you setup eudra to hold mail, and rename it whatever.mbx as at least with eudora it uses the .mbx extention. You should be able to now double click on the file and have it open up in eudora. Again, do a COPY of the original file in case this messes up and alters the file.
I'd bet you could probably import it into other mail clients like outlook or thunderbird.
-Greg
pr0gr4mm3r posted this at 04:53 — 4th September 2006.
He has: 1,502 posts
Joined: Sep 2006
Oops, I forgot to specify something important - this is a data file from the webserver. From my ~/mail folder on my website.
Greg K posted this at 16:05 — 8th September 2006.
He has: 2,145 posts
Joined: Nov 2003
I just did a test. I logged into my web server via FTP, (Running FreeBSD), went to the mail folder, and downloaded one of my mail files to my Eudora folder on my laptop. I then on my laptop renamed it from "sales" (the unix mailbox name) to "mailtest.mbx". Then I launched Eudora. In my list of mailboxes there was one called "mailtest" which had all the e-mail mesages. The only strange part was that it would not show a preview of the message (in the default eudora setup configuration, the bottom right window under the list of messages), so I thought it didn't work. However, if I double clicked on any message, the message DID come up in a new window.
If you are logged onto the server and it is Linux/FreeBSD , try going to your ~/mail directory and do elm -f filename where filname will be the name of the mail file in the folder. If however mail WAS the file, not the folder, go to the ~ directory and do elm -f mail
-Greg
pr0gr4mm3r posted this at 16:08 — 8th September 2006.
He has: 1,502 posts
Joined: Sep 2006
I will try that. Thanks for the info!
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