While perusing the internet, I found a couple sites that wrote some nice reviews on Emailchemy. It seems that we aren’t the only ones who believe that our product is helpful and effective! These are definitely sites to check out.
Entourage Email Archiver: This site talks about the effectiveness of the latest version of Emailchemy!
SoftSea Review: This is a very nice review of Emailchemy 9.8; they gave us a 5 star rating!
Til next time,
Jackie
Today we released the Emailchemy Memory Boost app, and I’m hoping it helps people deal with some of the gigantic email archives they’ve been writing to me about.
I originally designed Emailchemy to run in as little memory as possible, simply because at that time most computers had 32MB total of RAM. And, being that I was writing Emailchemy in Java, I had to be extra careful about how much heap space (”working memory”) Emailchemy required. This presented a specific requirement to not load an entire email message into memory for processing, because even back then, an email could be 10MB or larger with big attachments and most computers at the time would have choked under that weight. So, Emailchemy was designed to process the contents of an email in chunks, and it was able to run and convert any email in under 6MB of memory.
Even today when computers routinely ship with 1GB of RAM, I insist on sticking to highly efficient use of memory because it forces developers to write better code and it produces executables that can even run on lower-end, older computers. After all, not everybody buys a new laptop every 2 years.
Now, because Emailchemy is written in Java and therefore runs in a virtual machine, when the application starts it has to tell the virtual machine how much memory to grab from the host computer. The problem is that Java applications can’t see how much real memory the host computer has. So, we’ve intentionally kept the amount of memory that Emailchemy requests as low as possible — just high enough to work for most people’s needs. If we were to tell Emailchemy to grab too much memory, it would probably crash.
Even though Emailchemy processes the message content in chunks, for some formats it has to scan and build an index of all the little parts that make up a message in the original file, and that index has to be kept in memory throughout the conversion of all the messages.
So, we’ve bumped Emailchemy’s base memory footprint to 128MB just to accommodate these file formats. But, if a user has very large files, say bigger than a gigabyte or two, then Emailchemy really needs more memory to convert the email at the fastest rate possible. Then, if a user has extremely large files, say a 17GB PST file, Emailchemy really will need some more memory to even begin extracting and converting messages, because the index for such a file may take up the entirety of Emailchemy’s default memory allocation.
When people were writing in and asking for help with these super huge files, we tried to walk them through the process of editing a config file or starting Emailchemy from the command line to give it more memory. In many cases, the users were able to make the changes, but I can’t imagine trying to walk a marginally computer literate person through that exercise. So, it became very clear very fast that we needed to provide an easy way to change Emailchemy’s memory allocation.
But why a separate application? Why not build this into Emailchemy itself? Well, remember, Emailchemy can’t see how much memory the host computer has, so there was a risk that the user would choose a setting that asked for too much memory and thus prevent Emailchemy from launching again. If Emailchemy can’t start, then the user won’t be able to change the setting back, and Emailchemy wouldn’t be able to change it back itself. Sure, we could have posted instructions on how to completely uninstall and reinstall or manually change the setting back, but just putting this all in a separate application seemed like an easier way to go (for the users) in the long run. This way, if the user selects too much memory (which they might, because do average computer users really knows how much memory their computer has free? Probably not.), then they can always just run the memory setting application again and change Emailchemy’s memory back to the default setting.
Anyway, this is becoming a rather long-winded explanation of why the Emailchemy Memory Boost was needed. Ideally, most people shouldn’t need it, because it’s hard enough to explain why it’s needed at all.
So, in a nutshell, if you have really big email files to convert, and Emailchemy appears to be running slowly (say, only a message or two per second), or if Emailchemy stops completely when opening your giant file, try using the Emailchemy Memory Boost.
I am an email packrat. I first started using email at college back in 1990. Back then, all I used for reading email was the UNIX "mail" program. As I became more sophisticated I began to use Elm. For one reason or another, I was saving all my email, and eventually, I wanted greater control over it. So, I started using Eudora to manage my email from my dorm-room Macintosh Centris 610.
When I got out of college, most employers didn’t provide email, but mine did. It was considered somewhat of a perk and using it for personal correspondence was perfectly acceptable. As in college, I was once again saving all my personal email. Integrating it with my college email archives wasn’t a big deal since the company I worked for also used Eudora. But after a while, the big software companies discovered that professional email tools were a big market, and that is when the problems began.
The changes at work were based on corporate policy, but the changes at home were necessary to keep up with my email usage needs. In seemingly rapid succession, I went from using Eudora at work to using Apple’s PowerTalk, and from that to using WordPerfect Office (aka Groupwise), Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes, and finally Microsoft Outlook. Then, to further complicate matters, I went from using Eudora at home to using Apple’s PowerTalk, Claris Emailer, and Netscape Mail, back to Eudora again, and then finally Apple’s Mail.app that came with Mac OS X.
All of these new email applications that I had to use seemed to save email to the disk drive in their own special proprietary way. I can only guess that the big software companies created proprietary file formats for some kind of competitive advantage or product lock-in strategy, but regardless, I found myself in a situation where I had years of archived email saved in files created by several different applications that no other application could read.
Sure, some of the new email applications did allow me to import certain types of files, but they often didn’t do a very good job or they required the old email application to be installed. So, the majority of my email was still stranded and unreadable. With most new email applications, even if I could import my email there would be no way for me to export it back out again!
After much frustration, I realized that if I could at least “normalize” my data — that is, convert it all to the same format, it would be a step in the right direction. And if I could get everything into some kind of industry-standard format, any email application that comes along should be able to read it.
So, back in late 1996, I began writing Emailchemy to do exactly that, and ever since I’ve been building more converters and utilities, trying to build out Emailchemy into a powerful yet usable tool for everyone.
I’m not sure exactly which update did it, but Entourage has lost the ability to double-click import Entourage archives (.rge files). I for one found this feature very convenient, but that’s probably because I’ll import tens of archives in a single day when I’m testing a new converter. Still, it made it easy to describe the migration steps to customers moving to Entourage: “Convert and Double-click!”
No more.
I tested this with RGE files created by Entourage itself as well as RGE files created by Emailchemy, and every time Entourage 2008 would open when double clicking the RGE file, but no import. I now have to import using Entourage’s Import Wizard, which works, but just isn’t as fast or convenient.
From: Mike Fish
Subject: latest Emailchemy 1-9-6-3 aka 9-6-3
Date: April 25, 2008 9:58:46 AM GMT-04:00
To: contact@weirdkid.com
Hi,
Your application works and saves me a lot of time with settling the little matter of, I’m a “computer guy” who has to know how to use Entourage, Apple Mail, SeaMonkey mail, Thunderbird mail … etc. Of course, I have to be able to move large amounts of “the stack of stuff” between these e-mail clients. Emailchemy works.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you,
Mike Fish
080425.0955 EDT Friday
(Power Mac G4 1.25GHz, 1 processor - Mac OS 10.4.11 with all of Apple’s software updates)
We get a lot of questions from people asking how to move their mail into Outlook. I understand this can be a bit confusing, since Emailchemy does not write PST files, and Outlook can’t really import anything (though strangely, it does import from Netscape 4 and Eudora 3.2?).
Emailchemy can help you move your mail into Outlook, but you have to use the IMAP ImportServer tool (in Emailchemy) to do it. Here’s how:
1) Using Emailchemy’s conversion wizard, convert your old email files to the IMAP ImportServer format.
2) Launch Emailchemy’s IMAP ImportServer tool, select the folder you saved the mail to in step 1, and click “Start Server”.
3) In Outlook, create a new IMAP email account with the server, username, and password that the IMAP ImportServer tells you to use. Here is a link to a web site that has a walkthrough for creating an IMAP email account in Outlook.
4) In Outlook, (either automatically or after clicking “Send/Receive”), you will see a folder on the localhost IMAP server (the IMAP ImportServer). This folder will have all your converted mail in it. Drag this folder to a local folder in your Outlook browser, or use Outlook’s “Export to File” feature to write the contents of the hosted folder directly to a PST file.
As for “where” you do each step, you have to be running the IMAP server on the same machine as Outlook (security restriction), and it’s usually best to do the actual conversion of email on the target platform. So, if you are moving from a Mac, I would copy your entire mail folder from your Mac over to the Windows PC and run Emailchemy there for the conversion and the import.
Today we’re proud to announce that Uncle Hextor 1.0 is now available for download and purchase. Uncle Hextor is a new kind of hex editor — a reverse engineering hex editor — which was designed specifically for the type of work we do here at Weird Kid Software when we’re reverse engineering the various email storage formats supported by Emailchemy.
Uncle Hextor was developed by Wave Orbital LLC, in partnership with Weird Kid Software LLC, so you’ll see it for sale on both of our web sites (so don’t be alarmed).
It all started with a conversation I had with an old friend about software I needed but didn’t have time to write. I described a new kind of hex editor where I could highlight ranges of bytes and “tag” them as I work with a new file format, rather than working across several different apps (a standard hex editor, an XML editor, a data modeler, and even a pen-and-paper notebook). I really needed a better visual of the structures I’m uncovering as I work with the hex data. Then, the real killer feature would be the ability to dump the visual representation to an XML-Schema as a formal specification.
My friend Patrick from Wave Orbital, without hesitation, said he could build it and the rest is history.
Uncle Hextor isn’t done yet though. Yes, it’s a complete product per the basic specs we laid out that night over a beer, but just wait to see what else Wave Orbital has planned for it. As a programmer, this product and its potential really excites me.
Download the demo and give it a try.
Oh, the name? I don’t remember exactly, but I do remember that it had something to do with Uncle Fester from The Addams Family.
From: Michael Aumeerally
To: contact@weirdkid.com
Subject: emailchemy
Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 11:39:33 +0000
Hi there!
I just bought emailchemy from you a week ago, and it is a godsend!
I had over 5,000 messages on my Windows PC that I wanted to take over to Mac OS X Mail. The Outlook PST file was about 1GB.
I had previously tried Outlook2Mac on the PC itself, and it looked like it was going to take days to convert it all.
emailchemy converted the lot in about 20 mins on my new iMac.
Your program is pretty much the only solution for just taking a .pst from a PC and importing it into any e-mail application on the Mac - and believe me there is a good demand for that.
Just a note about one quirk I had in the process, I don’t think it’s a bug with your program - but a bug with the way Mac OS X Mail imports messages - I’ve seen it when bringing in mbox files created by other programs; basically if there is a hierarchy of folders being imported by Mac OS X Mail, messages in the top level folders import fine, but messages imported in the subfolders appear as blank messages with just the headers and no content. Now I managed to get round this by saving the messages converted by emailchemy as Mac OS X Mail 1.0 format - as they always seem to import into Mail fine - but this problem does affect messages converted into Mac OS X Mail 2.0 and later format which are then imported into Mail. Just to let you know I’m running Mac OS X Mail 3.2 on Leopard.
Just one last thing, it would be really great if your program could extract Microsoft Outlook contacts from the .PST file and export them as .vcf files. I know it’s a lot to ask, but I definitely would be interested in paying for that; at the moment I have to rely on Outlook2Mac to bring the contacts across.
Thanks very much for making this program,
Regards
Mike
[note: We’ve noted and mentioned weird behavior in Mac OS X Mail’s import wizard before. Mike here found a method that seems to work pretty well, though. — Matt]
From: akag70@xxxxx.xxx
To: contact@weirdkid.com
Subject: Great Software
Date: Sat, 1 Mar 2008 15:06:41 +0100
I was fighting with my work email (outlook) and my personal computer (mac) since one year.
I tried all the different solutions that forums provide (use thunderbird, export, import) and I waste a lot of time; I tried O2M but it was painful: it took a lot of time and half the time was wasted, because anytime something happened: a problem with windows, lost attachments, and so on.
Finally I reach your website and after an enthusiastic demo experience (just 10 minute to convert a 2.5 gb .pst file) I bought the full version and in 15 minutes I solved all the issues.
I just believe your software is really great and solve terrificly any issues of mail conversion.
(I was looking through a lot of websites and forum before I get into a message talking of you: why you are not so known?)
thank you!
Andrea Gino
Just got a kind note from Mike, a Mac user, saying that Emailchemy was the only Mac-based method he could find to convert his Windows Outlook PST file to Mac OS X Mail. 1GB in 20 minutes, not bad at all.
Anyway, he wrote to also report another quirk in Mac OS X Mail’s import feature. I say “another” because I’ve already noted (and reported to Apple) a few others. The issue he reported was that when importing mbox folders in Mail 2.0 format (Mac Mail .mbox folders are not the same as standard mbox files), Mail will import all the folders but some folders that are deeper in the hierarchy have all their messages show up blank. Mike reported that importing mbox folders in the Mail 1.0 format worked fine, however.
The problem with the Mail import bugs (I’m not calling them quirks anymore) is that they are often hard to reproduce and there may only be a few other users who ever see this issue.
This is why I recommend using Emailchemy’s embedded IMAP server (the IMAP ImportServer tool) if you can. It bypasses the import wizard by providing you a desktop mail server that you download your converted mail from. It’s as simple as creating a new email account and downloading the mail.
Aside from the bugs in the import wizard, I like using Mac OS X Mail. It’s what I’ve been using for the past several years and I haven’t seen anything else I like on the Mac yet.