Email File Formats
Home Consultancy Support Contracts Client History Downloads Links Contact Us

Return
Here is listed the file formats of many standard email packages as used by Mail System Converter.

Importing Address Books using Mail System Converter

{Text} Optional. Ignored if not there.

[Name] Field. Field data read from here.

Xyz | abc. Xyz or abc. Either format accepted.

Pegasus Import (Windows)

To create this file from Pegasus open an Address Book then from the Address Book menu that appears choose Export to a text file.

Name: [Name]
Of: [Dept]
Key: [Key]
Street address: [Office]
Postal address: [Address]
E-mail address: [email]
Phone number: [Phone]
Fax number: [Fax]
Notes: [Notes]
--

This import scans for each of the above headers until an end of record (--) is found then starts a new record. Any missing headers are imported as blanks.

Pegasus Import (DOS)

This import will read in the format required by the PMIMPORT.EXE supplied with the Pegasus DOS version.

Name: [Name]
Dept: [Dept]
Key: [Key]
Email: [email]
Postal: [Address]
Street: [Office]
Phone: [Phone]
Fax: [Fax]
Notes: [Notes]

Scans for each of the above headers until a blank line is found then starts a new record. Any missing headers are imported as blanks.

Eudora Light Nicknames (NNDBASE.TXT)

There are too many formats of Eudora address books available for me to cover all the possible permutations but this import will cover the most popular format produced by various versions of Eudora Light (and possibly other versions).

alias "[Name/Dept]" email | alias [Name/Dept] email
note "[Name]" [Notes]

In the Eudora file Notes normally contains ASCII #3 characters to separate lines. These are translated into commas during the import.

Comma Separated Values File (*.CSV)

Name, Dept, Key, Office, Address, email, Phone{, Fax, Notes}

Use this import to read in address information exported from another mail program, exported from a database, or that has been maintained in a spreadsheet such as Excel and saved as a CSV file.

You should always make sure that the last field is never blank so that all fields are included (some databases / spreadsheets leave out the fields if they are blank). An easy way to do this is to copy a single dot (.) into all blank phone number or Notes entries before saving as CSV. Fields can be wrapped in quotes (") but it is not compulsory unless the field itself contains a comma.

The import counts how many fields there are on the first line of the file. If seven or nine fields are found then the file is accepted and an import started.

If the key field is blank then the email address is checked for an @ symbol then the part to the left of this (i.e. users login name) is used as the key otherwise it is KEY + a unique number.

Up to five empty lines can be left at the end of the file without confusing the import. Any other blank lines or lines where not all fields are present may cause the import to fail.

Unipalm Mail-It, Firefox NOV*IX Mail, FTP Onnet (16 bit) Mail (*.abc)

Reads from the fixed length record file produced by these mailers. This file contains only two fields, Full Name and email address.

The Full Name is parsed for Office and Department as follows :

[Name] {([Office] / [Dept])}

If the key field is blank then the email address is checked for an @ symbol then the part to the left of this (i.e. users login name) is used as the key otherwise it is KEY + a unique number.

Notes is filled in as "Imported from Mail-It"

Spry Air-Mail (*.als)

[Name] {(Office / Dept)} : [email]

If the email address contains an @ symbol then the part to the left of this (i.e. users login name) is used as the key otherwise it is KEY + a unique number.

Notes is "Imported from Air Mail"

Exporting Address Books using Mail System Converter

Text} Optional. Left out if field is blank.

[Name] Field. Replaced by actual field data.

Pegasus Export (Windows)

Name: [Name]
Of: [Dept]
Key: [Key]
Street address: [Office]
Postal address: [Address]
E-mail address: [email]
Phone number: [Phone]
Fax number: [Fax]
Notes: [Notes]
--

Excludes where office = "Left Company" or email address contains a comma (distribution list).

Pegasus Export (DOS)  (PMIMPORT.EXE)

Name: [Name]
Dept: [Dept]
Key: [Key]
Email: [email]
Postal: [Address]
Street: [Office]
Phone: [Phone]
Fax: [Fax]
Notes: [Notes]

Netscape Address Book (ADDRESS.HTM)

Standard Netscape headers for Address Book then :

<DT><A HREF="mailto:[email]" NICKNAME="[key]">[Name]</A>
<DD>[Office] - [Dept]{ - Phone : " + [Phone]

Eudora Pro Version 3 (NNDBASE.TXT)

Eudora nick name file very similar to the Eudora Light one except it fills in some of the additional fields available in Eudora Pro. May also be usable in later versions of Eudora Light.

alias "[Name]" [email]
note "[Name]" <address: [Office]><name: [Name]>{<phone: [Phone]>}[Dept]

Eudora Version 2 (NNDBASE.TXT)

I have never actually seen a version of the program which uses this format but I am assured that a particular version of Eudora version 2 does use it.

<[Name]>
>{email]
<[Name]>
>[Office] [Dept]{ - Phone : [Phone]}

Eudora Light Nicknames (NNDBASE.TXT)

alias "[Name]" [email]
Note "[Name]" [Office] - [Dept]{ - Phone : [phone]}

Comma Separated Values File (*.CSV)

Name, Dept, Key, Office, Address, email, Phone, Fax, Notes

Unipalm Mail-It, Firefox NOV*IX Mail, FTP Software Onnet (16 bit) Mail (*.ABC)

Fixed length file of record length 190 characters.

Unused 28 characters
[Name] {(Office / Dept)} 81 characters
[email] 81 characters

HTML Table (*.HTM)

Creates a HTML file which contains a number of tables which can be placed on an Intranet / Internet web server or just pointed to on a file server with a Bookmark in Netscape or MSIE etc. (e.g. point to m:\mail\addrbook.htm.

Address Entries should have been pre-sorted by Office (Or Office field not used) as a separate table will be created for each "office". One way to do this is to import into Excel a CSV file, sort it, save as CSV and Import into MSC.

Header

<!DOCTYPE NETSCAPE-Addressbook-file-1>
<!-- This is an automatically generated file.
It will be read and overwritten.
Do Not Edit! -->
<TITLE>Mail Address book</TITLE>
<H1>Mail Address book</H1><DL>
<DL><p>
<TABLE>
<TR><TD WIDTH=350><H4>Name</TD></H4>
<TD WIDTH=400><H4>Phone No.</TD></H4>
<TD WIDTH=300><H4>Email Address</TD></H4>
<TD WIDTH=500><H4>Department / Job Function</TD></TR></H4>
<DT><H2>[Office]</H2>

Each address entry.

<TR><TD WIDTH=350>
<A HREF="mailto:[email]">[Name]</A></TD>
<TD WIDTH=400>[Phone]</TD>
<TD WIDTH=300>[email]</TD>
<TD WIDTH=500>[Dept]</TD></TR>

Which produces a four column table + header broken up at each change of "office" as follows :

[Office]

Name

Phone No.

Email Address

Department / Job Function
Stephen Knight 6637 stephenk@sol.ftp.com MIS

Spry Air-Mail (*.ALS)

Normally called spry.als consists of two fields, name and email address. Export from this program also includes the Office and Department in brackets after the name if they are filled in.

Name (Office / Dept) : email

Importing Folders with Mail System Converter

The Netscape and Eudora folder imports will import all messages that are stored within the folders that are present, including messages that have been deleted but still exist in the folder. To make sure that no deleted messages are exported you should first compress all the folders using the options within those programs to compress or recover lost space.

You should always make sure you have not got Pegasus or the other mail package open when running a conversion otherwise it may not work correctly.

Netscape to Pegasus

Netscape stores folders in plain text in standard RFC822 format in two files each, normally in the directory \Program Files\Netscape\Navigator\Mail (or the Mail directory under where you installed Netscape). Each folder is stored as a filename without an extension containing the actual messages and one with an SNM extension containing indexing information. Only the first file is required for this converter.

Each of these folder files consists of RFC822 messages separated by a line similar to this :

From - Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 1996

The actual date is not important, doesn’t appear to be used by Netscape, and isn’t used by this converter. Each file with no extension in the chosen directory is converted by copying the messages into the Pegasus directory or, if one already exists with the same name, appending the new messages to it with messages separated by the Pegasus ASCII 26 character. Each folder is added to the Pegasus MAIN tray list as it works.

If a Pegasus index file exists for one of these folders then it is deleted and will need to be rebuilt using the Folders | Re-Index folder option for each folder involved or using the program prebuild.exe supplied with Pmail DOS version.

Eudora to Pegasus

Eudora stores its folders in plain text files in a format similar to Netscape. For each folder there are two files, folder.MBX and folder.TOC. For this converter only the MBX file (the actual messages) is required and the TOC index file, if present, will be ignored. Eudora typically stores its mail files in the same directory as the Eudora program files.

At the moment the DESCMAP.PCE file which contains a list of the folders is ignored and instead all the files with an MBX extension in the chosen directory are the ones looked at for conversion. A future version may read the descmap.pce file and convert the long folder names too.

Each MBX file consists of messages separated by a line of this form before each message :

From ???@??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000

The actual address and date information seems to be ignored by Eudora and likewise by this converter. The converter steps through each of the MBX files and adds the messages from that folder to a Pegasus one of the same name (or appends the messages to the end of an existing folder if one already exists) separating them the Pegasus ASCII 26 character.

As with the Netscape conversion if a Pegasus index file exists for an imported folder it will be deleted and needs to be re-created using the Folders | re-index folder option or Prebuild.exe.

Mail-It & Other Directory / File Systems

This is a generic converter that will convert a series of directories into trays and folders and the files within them into messages within the folders. The format of the individual files needs to be standard RFC822 format as the messages remain in their original format once added to the Pegasus folders.

This conversion is known to work with folders from the following packages :

  • Unipalm Mail-It
  • FTP Software Onnet Mail (pre Onnet 32)
  • Firefox NOV*IX Mail
  • Beame & Whiteside Mail
  • others which either store their folders in this way or which you can export the messages to individual text files.

These programs may store their folders almost anywhere depending upon how they were installed but typically have a mail directory containing files such as the Address Book then a sub directory under that called Folders which contains messages and any sub-folders.

A name is chosen for the first folder (root) and it is made unique if one of the same name already exists. The source directory is then scanned from top to bottom and a list made of any sub-directories that need to be ‘explored’ for further messages (maximum 500 per directory). Any files matching the file extension chosen that are found in the current directory are added to the root folder.

For mailers such as Mail-It, NOV*IX Mail, Onnet Mail the file extension normally signifies message status (e.g. R for read, C for created etc.) so you can choose to import only certain messages in this way or choose * as the message extension and all files will be imported. B&W, on the other hand, uses the extension .MSG so you can type that in and only those files will be added as messages to the Pegasus folders.

When the bottom of the directory has been reached if there have been no sub-directories found then the folder is added to the tray list and the process stops. If sub-directories do exist then a root tray is created and the root folder is placed within this tray. The sub-directories are then scanned in turn, each of which may have further sub-directories, then added as a folder to the tray.

As each folder is imported it is given a unique filename based on the original directory name with the last letters removed and replaced by random hex digits until it is unique. The folder’s ‘real’ name as seen within Pegasus is always the original directory name.

When the import starts you are given the option of either importing into a sub-folder or directly into the main Pegasus folder list. The sub-folder option adds all the new folders and trays to a new tray then adds that tray to Pegasus’s MAIN tray, the other option adds all the new folders and trays directly to Pegasus’s MAIN tray.

As with the other imports the messages are added to the folders separated by a single ASCII 26 character and each folder will need to be indexed using the Folders | Re-Index folder option or the DOS program PREBUILD.EXE.

Exporting Folders with Mail System Converter

All folder exports will export all messages that are stored within the folders that are present, including messages that have been deleted but still exist in the folder. To make sure that no deleted messages are exported you should first compress all the folders.

You should always make sure you have not got Pegasus or the other mail package open when running a conversion otherwise it may not work correctly.

It is also suggested that you give your folders meaningful filenames within Pegasus as you create them (i.e. fill in the filename as well as the folder name) as it is the filename that is converted and seen by the other packages. If you already have folders with the Pegasus supplied FOLDxxxx filenames you can change them simply by opening the Folders window, highlighting the folder, pressing the rename button and typing in a new filename.

Pegasus to Netscape

The converter looks for files with the extension PMM (Pegasus folders) in the chosen Source directory and if found starts the conversion process. A maximum of 500 folders can be converted at one time.

For each Pegasus folder a Netscape folder file is created (or the messages are appended if one exists with the same name) to take the messages from the folder. Messages are separated by the following line :

From - Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 1996

Because Netscape uses the From keyword at the beginning of a line to recognise the start of a new message if the word From appears anywhere else in a message at the beginning of a line it is escaped with a > character. This is removed before Netscape displays messages.

If a SNM index file already existed because the Pegasus messages are being added to an existing folder then it is deleted so that Netscape will rebuild it when it is next started.

Pegasus to Eudora

As with the Netscape converter this looks for a maximum of 500 Pegasus Folder (PMM) files in the chosen Source directory.

Each Pegasus folder is transferred into a Eudora MBX folder file of the same name (or if one exists with the same name then the messages are appended to it). Messages are separated by the following line :

From ???@??? Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 1996

As with the Netscape conversion if the word From is found at the beginning of a line then it is escaped with the > character to prevent Eudora recognising this as the start of a new message.

Likewise, if a TOC index file exists then it is deleted so that Eudora will have to re-index the folder before using it.

Pegasus to Mail-It & Other File / Directory Systems

This is a more elaborate export than the Netscape and Eudora ones in that it follows the Pegasus tray and folder structure and creates a series of directories and sub-directories containing an individual file for each message in a format similar to these mail packages.

Before exporting you are asked for a file extension for the message files. Each message will be created with a random filename and this extension within the relevant directory.

Depending upon the version and capabilities of the other mail program you may or not be able to export Pegasus messages to it in this way. Some packages can recognise new messages and rebuild an index. Others will simply ignore the new ones.

Another use of this export is for archiving messages. Export the messages with the extension .TXT, for example, then you can simply click the files in Explorer or File Manager to view them.

[Top]

 

Text links: [ Return ]