Reluctantly Switching from Eudora to Apple Mail

It was depressing (but very useful) to read of Tonya's trials switching from Eudora. Like many university users encouraged to adopt Eudora a decade ago, each year I contemplate 'the switch' also. But most of us (like Tonya) have developed idiosyncratic ways to handle large volumes of email over the years. For many teachers and administrators, Eudora archives have become THE repository for decisions made and notifications sent. For me this meant establishing a set of standard mailboxes, attachment folders and filters, and then every January these would be renamed as archives for the past year ear, and a new set started. Though inelegant, it has served me well and I have never lost anything important (except by my own hand, of course). This substructure also means that when I need something really important that I can't recall appropriate keywords for, I can usually find it in the appropriate year's subject folder using sorts or other manual methods, faster than figuring out how to query a massive database. This is the single biggest flaw with most 'modern' mail programs - their reliance on one or a few large database files. With a GB of messages, such databases slow down central systems by triggering large back-ups for every minor change. It is also not surprising that complex, GB size databases when used in consumer applications by myriads of users who do the oddest things to their computers, can so often become corrupted or just plain slow to use.

-Peter Boag --

I quit using Eudora when I switched to OS X in 2001, since it never
played nicely in OS X. It always had some annoying window handling
quirks. I first switched to PowerMail, then Entourage, and finally
Apple Mail in 10.3.

On 14-Apr-08, at 15:00 , Alexander Hoffman wrote:
>
> 1) command-down arrow, command-up arrow to go the previous and next
> messages. Mail, it seems, lacks commands to do this. (She doesn't
> like the three pane view.)

In mail, space bar goes to next message (as long as you are at the end
of the message).

Never wanted to go back, but I would think there would be a way.

At 02.12 -0700 2008-04-15, Mary Arthur wrote:
>On 14-Apr-08, at 15:00 , Alexander Hoffman wrote:
>>
>>1) command-down arrow, command-up arrow to go the previous and next
>>messages. Mail, it seems, lacks commands to do this. (She doesn't
>>like the three pane view.)
>
>In mail, space bar goes to next message (as long as you are at the end
>of the message).

Not with a message open in its own window, only in preview (three-pane view) - unless space bar works in Leopard (I'm still on Tiger).

On 14 Apr, 2008, at 5:00 pm, Alexander Hoffman wrote:
>
> 1) command-down arrow, command-up arrow to go the previous and next
> messages. Mail, it seems, lacks commands to do this. (She doesn't
> like the three pane view.)
> Answer: I created Eudora-specific scripts in Keyboard Maestro with
> the appopriate menu comands . (command-w, down arrow, enter.)
> Cost: $0. I had a license that I've not been using. Other scripting
> utilities could do this, or even an AppleScript. (Can you activate
> AppleScripts with keyboard shortcuts?)

This is what I missed most when I switched to Mail from Eudora. My
solution was similar except that I used GUI Applescripting to produce
the script which I run with a keyboard command and FastScripts.

Simon

Tonya Said:

The second problem that I had to figure out on my own was that Mail wouldn't let me move messages out of one of my inboxes - the messages kept bouncing back as though the destination mailboxes were locked, or radioactive, or something. The fix related to a setting for the account where I was having messages also kept on the server for a week after delivery. Apparently that was a no-no.

Hmm.. This is one of the things I love Eudora for, I could clearly manage what was left on the server. My reasoning behind this is I'll use web based email sometime to access my account and I'd like to have the last several days of email. Any ideas for working around this?

I could setup a server side filter and a second mailbox to hold a copy of my email, but this could get tricky as well to clean out reasonably frequently.

One of the Eudora features I *really* miss is "option-click-on-
something-clump-those-things-together". So helpful for focusing in...

I end up creating smart folders for that kind of thing in Mail, but
it's less ad-hoc elegant, to be sure.

On my (early)MacBook, OS 10.5.2, Mail 3.2: CMD-Dn Arrow and CMD-Up
Arrow go to the next or previous message. Interestingly enough, Space
and Shift-Space do exactly the same things, namely go to the next or
previous message.
Don Power

What a nightmare! I'm sorry you had to go through that! And okay, I'm definitely sticking with Eudora 6.2.4 for a while longer.

I'm running 10.5.2, and the only real problem I have with Eudora is that the tab bar doesn't always show itself properly when I'm switching between spaces. That's it; it's working great otherwise. And like others, I love the ability to be able to option-click headers to group them, and to use the pencil edit function to edit received messages (mostly to remove hideous fonts!).

I guess I'm not switching anytime soon.

On 15-Apr-2008, at 03:12, Mary Arthur wrote:
> On 14-Apr-08, at 15:00 , Alexander Hoffman wrote:
>>
>> 1) command-down arrow, command-up arrow to go the previous and next
>> messages. Mail, it seems, lacks commands to do this. (She doesn't
>> like the three pane view.)
>
> In mail, space bar goes to next message (as long as you are at the end
> of the message).

Not if you don't use the stupid three pane view it doesn't.

On 15-Apr-2008, at 17:35, Donald Power wrote:
> On my (early)MacBook, OS 10.5.2, Mail 3.2: CMD-Dn Arrow and CMD-Up
> Arrow go to the next or previous message. Interestingly enough, Space
> and Shift-Space do exactly the same things, namely go to the next or
> previous message.

Again, many of these things only work if you use the three-pane view.
Apple Mail has all sorts of things that simply do not work if you do
not want to use the three-pane view.

I have to think it is intentional.

mrh3 convinced me to stay with 6.2.4 when in 10.5.2. I have held off
going to Leopard mainly because I was worried about Eudora being
viable. It seems to me that for those of us Eudora "oldtimers", we
will have to hope 1) Apple allows a much smoother transition to Apple
Mail OR the open source people who took over Eudora develop a new
version that will allow us to make a simple conversion.

Tom Casselman
casscoc-fourth.com

At 4:35 PM -0700 4/15/08, mrh3 wrote:

>And like others, I love the ability to be able to option-click
>headers to group them, and to use the pencil edit function to edit
>received messages (mostly to remove hideous fonts!).

In Settings > Styled Text, uncheck *Font*.

-Carl

Hmmm... I think I might desist from switching to Mail. So far I managed to keep a wide berth around Mail which simply lacks the features I use most in Eudora. Hmmm... maybe it's worth waiting for the release of Odysseus on 12th May. See whether it holds what its developers promise.

Eric

I've been beta testing Odysseus, and I think version 0.5 is quite promising, but they have a long way to go, and I don't think they will have it done anywhere near May 12. Having said that, I don't have any inside information one way or the other. It's just that there are way too many settings that are still under development. Given the time it has taken for them to get this far, it seems unlikely they will get to the finish line in the next three weeks.

Having said that, as a loyal Eudora user, what they've done so far is really good. If it keeps going like this, it will definitely be worth the wait.

The second problem that I had to figure out on my own was that Mail wouldn't let me move messages out of one of my inboxes - the messages kept bouncing back as though the destination mailboxes were locked, or radioactive, or something. The fix related to a setting for the account where I was having messages also kept on the server for a week after delivery. Apparently that was a no-no.

HI Tonya