We released Emailchemy 11.2 this week. It includes improvements in several converters and a new feature for helping recover from crashed Google Apps uploads.

• Better handling of AOL HTML content
• Entourage converter now includes and identifies both original and user-edited subjects
• Fixed blank attachment names from PST files
• Improved handling of corrupt Claris Emailer 2 databases
• New option for manually deleting the Google Apps Uploader history file

This is a free update for all current v11 users. For users of older Emailchemy versions, the upgrade is free if you purchased after June 17, 2010 (within 1 year of the release of v11). If you purchased before June 17, 2010, send us an email to get a 50% off renewal coupon.

Emailchemy 11 introduces support for Outlook Mac 2011 OLM files. It also adds features to the Google Apps Uploader command line tool for more control over scripted migrations.

Use the coupon code V11PROMO before June 19 to save $18.95 off the regular price. That means you can get the Personal Edition – Individual license for just $11!

Emailchemy 10.1 was released with these changes:

• Improved IMAP server performance – faster imports
• New Google Apps Uploader feature to fixes Gmail’s Sent folder for uploaded mail
• New option for better handling of international characters in folder names

The new Google Apps Uploader feature requires a bit of an explanation. In Gmail, there is no notion of a “Sent” folder. Yes, there is a link you can click that says “Sent Mail” which will show you mail that you sent, but it’s not a folder in the sense that there are specific messages put into a container (i.e. a folder) of messages. The subtle though important difference in how Gmail’s Sent Items link works is that it does a real-time search of all your email messages and shows you a list of all of the messages that have your gmail.com email address (or Google Apps address) in the “From: ” header. Effectively, this is the same as having a real “Sent” folder, but it breaks if you try to import messages into Gmail.

Why? Because if you are importing email into Gmail (or Google Apps), the email you have sent from your previous mail accounts will have your old email address in the “From:” header field of each sent message and they won’t show up in the search results you see when you click the “Sent Mail” link in Gmail. As far as Gmail is concerned, they just aren’t “sent” messages.

So, when you do see your old sent messages in Gmail, Gmail will think they are received messages and display them as such in the list, showing your old email address in the “name field of the message list (because you were the sender, remember).

Gmail only shows three fields in the message list: the sender, the subject and the date — and you can’t change this as you might be able to in Outlook or Thunderbird. Sure, Emailchemy can upload your sent messages into Gmail and then tag them with the name of the folder they came from, so these messages appear to be in a folder called “Sent Items” or “Sent”, but Gmail will still display these messages with the same 3 fields: sender (you), subject and date. Not helpful at all when you are trying to find an old email you sent to your boss.

In Emailchemy 10.1, we introduced a new option on the Google Apps Uploader tool: “Re-write sender of messages in ‘Sent’ folder to force them into Gmail ‘Sent Mail’”. When you check this box, Emailchemy will change the “From:” field of all your sent messages to contain your new Google Apps email address. Then, “Sent Mail” will work as it should, showing all your old sent messages too. This option has been added to the command line version of the Google Apps Uploader too.

Emailchemy 10.1 is a free update for all licensed users of Emailchemy 10.0.

Emailchemy 10 was released just before the US Thanksgiving Holiday. This is a major update to Emailchemy that includes several new email format converters, including:

• CompuServe for Windows (WinCIM)
• Outlook .MSG files
• Outlook for Mac versions 8 & 2001 (not 2011)
• Outspring Mail
• Windows Live Mail
• Windows Mail

It’s important to point out that the Outlook for Mac support we’ve added is only for the very old versions of Outlook for Mac and not for the new version just released in Office 2011 for Mac. These were versions of Outlook for Mac that existed before Entourage, and they used a variation of the PST file for storage. We are working on the Outlook 2011 for Mac formats and hope to release support for them soon.

We’ve also simplified the download and install process by no longer requiring you to log-in to a web site to download updates. Now, just download the update directly from the main Emailchemy web page.

Emailchemy version 10 is a free update for anyone who bought Emailchemy in the past 12 months.

This update to Emailchemy adds the Entourage Recovery functionality to Entourage X (version 10) databases and fixed a couple small converter bugs in the AOL converter and the Mac OS X Mail output format. This update is available for download now.

A new version of Emailchemy is available to download now. This update includes a new option for turning off strict RFC-2822 parsing of email header fields in the Forensic Edition, and a couple critical bug fixes for all users:

• a bug in the “Entourage Recovery” converter that caused it to crash before recovering any deleted messages
• a bug in the Google Apps Uploader that caused it to crash upon launch

Emailchemy 9.8.8 is now available on the website. This maintenance release includes:

• Improved Entourage Recovery converter recovers more deleted messages
• Entourage converter now extracts meeting accepted/rejected response messages
• Fixed Google Apps Uploader’s handling of messages with quoted-printable and base64-encoded text bodies

The Entourage Recovery converter is only available in the Advanced Conversion tool, and it is intended for when you need to recover deleted messages from an Entourage Database. Now the recovery converter is able to recover more deleted messages than before. This update also changes the recovery converter so that it will only extract the recovered messages — it will skip messages that can be recovered by the standard Entourage converter.

The Entourage converter now extracts the meeting confirmation messages that Entourage sends to the meeting organizer when you accept or reject a meeting invitation. These messages are usually blank, but the converter now attaches the original meeting notice as an iCalendar (.ics) file for traceability.

The Google Apps Uploader now correctly handles messages with text bodies that use alternative Content-Transfer-Encodings. In a few rare cases, the messages were not rendered correctly by the Gmail interface after upload, and this updates now compensates.

Emailchemy 9.8.7 is now available on the website. This maintenance release includes:

• Conversion logging now available in CLI
• Conversion log now using syslog format
• GUI Bug fixes for Google Apps Uploader and Entourage Archive wizard

Conversion logging has been absent from the command-line interface (CLI) ever since we took the CLI out of beta, but now logging is back. However, it’s not a command line switch or argument of its own; you have to use the –configfile= argument and specify a settings file. Recall that settings files are exported from Emailchemy’s Preferences window in the GUI. So, run the GUI, go into the preferences and check the “Write log” checkbox, export the settings to a file, then use that settings file as the config file for the CLI.

The log format was also due for an update. Given the plethora of log file analyzer tools available that use the standard syslog format, we decided this would be a better format to use than the one we had. Plus, it provides flexibility for us to add more features to the logging as needed.

Finally, there were a couple of minor bugs in the GUI that prevented files from being selected or buttons from being clickable. Those are fixed.

Emailchemy 9.8.6 is now available on the website. This maintenance release includes:

• Performance improvements for Google Apps Uploader
• Configurable number of automatic retries in Google Apps Uploader command line interface
• Claris Emailer 2.0 converter now preserves international characters

The performance improvements in the Google Apps Uploader are around the handling of messages that exceed the maximum allowed size on Gmail (20MB). These messages are rejected by Google Apps after being uploaded and the Google service sends the entire rejected message back in the rejection response — causing a needless delay in the upload process. So now Emailchemy’s Google Apps Uploader will detect the large message prior to the upload. The Uploader will also stop loading the message into memory once the maximum size is reached, so you should see some memory usage improvements too.

The CLI for the Google Apps Uploader was modified to allow you to specify a maximum number of automatic retries before reporting a failed message upload. The retries use a truncated exponential backoff delay combined with subsequent random ranged backoff. The net effect is you’ll see a wait period somewhere between 29 to 159 seconds between any 2 upload attempts of a single message. This helps prevent unnecessary network congestion during large bulk uploads.

Finally, the Claris Emailer 2.0 converter’s handling of international characters is much improved. Previous versions required the conversion to occur on the source platform in order to detect the charset (codepage) of the messages, but now the converter has a new charset detection mechanism that is working quite well.

Enough people have trouble with importing email into Outlook or trying to create PST files that we felt it necessary to give an explicit walk-through of detailed instructions. We’ve also been experimenting with answering tech support requests with video “screencasts”, so I’m putting them both in this post for future reference.

Outlook has many advanced features and the user interface presents many different ways to perform any given task, but the problem is that not all results are consistent. After much experimentation, we’ve found a sequence of actions that will work in most circumstances.

The screencast starts with the act of converting Entourage email, but you could substitute the converting of any supported format. For example, you could use these instructions to move a standard mbox file into Outlook, too, as a general way to convert mbox to PST files.

View Screencast here: http://screencast.com/t/ktDmvphFJ6∞

Step 1: Convert your mail to the IMAP ImportServer format

1. do this on the computer you are moving to, or at least the same kind of computer (Windows, Mac, etc.)
2. copy your email from your old computer to the new computer
3. run Emailchemy, use the “Conversion Wizard” tool (you’ll be in it after Emailchemy starts)
4. select the source format, click Next
5. select your old email files, click Convert
6. select the IMAP ImportServer format from the drop-down list
7. enter a name, like “convertedmail”

Step 2: Start the IMAP ImportServer

1. in Emailchemy, click the Toolbox button
2. select the “convertedmail.imapserver” folder — it should already be in the file box, though
3. click the “Start Server” button

Step 3: Connect Outlook to the IMAP server

1. launch Outlook, using the menu, select Tools –> Account Settings…
2. click New to create a new account
3. choose Microsoft Exchange, POP3, IMAP or HTTP, then click Next
4. at the bottom of the next window, check “Manually configure server settings…” and click Next
5. select Internet E-mail and click Next
6. Enter the following:
   • Your Name: import
   • E-mail Address: import@localhost
   • Account Type: IMAP
   • Incoming mail server: localhost
   • Outgoing mail server: localhost
   • User Name: import
   • Password: mymail
7. Click “More Settings…”, click the Advanced tab, and enter:
   • Incoming server (IMAP): 8143
8. Click OK, then Next, then Finish, then Close (to close the Account Settings window)

[Note: at this point you should be able to browse your mail on the server. If you do not see your mail folders inside the mail account folder in Outlooks navigation pane, then you can right-click on the account name (import@localhost) and select "Update Folder List"]

Step 4: Force Outlook to download the mail

1. in Outlook, click on a folder in the new account folder, any folder
2. using the main menu, select Tools –> Send/Receive –> Send/Receive Settings –> Define Send/Receive Groups
3. select All Accounts, then click the Edit button
4. select the option: “Download complete items including attachments…”
   • optional: uncheck “Send mail items” (turn this back on after done importing)
5. click OK, then Close
6. click Send/Receive in the toolbar

[Note: this part can take some time while Outlook is downloading all the email from the server.]

When complete, your mail will be in the PST file found by right-clicking on the account folder, select Properties, then click “Advanced…”. From this point you can copy your mail to an existing PST file or a new one.

Step 5 Option A: Copy the mail to an existing local PST file

1. right-click on the server folder you want to copy — all subfolders will be copied automatically
2. select “Copy (name of folder you selected)…”
3. a window will popup and ask you to select the folder to copy the server folder to, or you can create a new folder
4. click OK

Step 5 Option B: Copy the mail to a new PST file:

1. select the server folder you want to copy
2. using the main menu, select File –> Import and Export…
3. select “Export to a file”, click Next
4. select “Personal Folder File (.pst)”, click Next
5. double check you have the right folder selected, then click “Include subfolders”
6. select where to save the new PST file and what to call it, then click Finish

At this point you can then open the PST file you just created with File –> Open –> Outlook Data File