I’ve seen this happen when the RGE files were created on the Windows PC and then moved to the Mac. There are certain methods of moving files between Mac and PC that can screw up the encoding of the linefeed character.

Try this method instead:

1) copy your PST files to your Mac
2) run Emailchemy and convert Outlook PST to Entourage Archive (.rge files)
3) run Entourage and use its import wizard and import the .rge file you created in step 2

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 9.8.4 was released on January 7 with better handling of Eudora for Mac email and the ability to recover deleted messages from Entourage Database files. This update is recommended for all users converting Eudora for Mac email.

The Eudora for Mac improvements focused around better handling of mailboxes with corrupt TOC (table of contents) data. Eudora for Mac still puts data (the TOC, namely, and some other info) in Mac OS resource forks – a special Mac-specific part of a file that was supposed to go away with Mac OS 9. Technically, Mac OS X is supposed to be backward compatible with resource forks, but you also have to consider that the last version of Eudora for Mac was released back in 2006 — about a year before Mac OS X 10.5 was released. There are many documented issues of Eudora for Mac not running well in Mac OS X 10.5, and most of these issues can be traced to the corruption of the mailbox resource fork.

When Emailchemy’s Eudora for Mac converter would hit a mailbox with a corrupted resource fork that contained TOC data, it would sometimes skip the entire mailbox thinking that the TOC was empty. As soon as this was discovered we logged it as a critical but and got it fixed right away. The workaround for affected end users was to change Emailchemy’s setting in the preferences to simply not use the TOC data for Eudora conversion, we also realized we had to make the converter smarter about when to use the TOC data, so now the converter is much more robust.

For recovering Entourage deleted messages, we created a new converter in the Advanced Conversion tool. We did this because the recovery scan can take quite long compared to doing a standard conversion, and this way the recovery scan will only be used if you explicitly want it.

When you delete a message in Entourage and then empty the Trash folder, the message is marked as deleted and removed from the database’s internal list of messages, but the message data is still there. The message data (the header, the message contents, and even attachments) will stay in your Database file until you tell Entourage to rebuild or compact the database. Emailchemy’s new Entourage Recovery converter knows how to find deleted messages, and it will attempt to rebuild the message from the data it can find.

Our test results show that the Emailchemy’s Entourage Recovery converter is able to recover 100% of all received messages that have been marked for deletion since the last time the Database file was rebuilt, but it is unable to recover sent messages. This limitation has to do with how sent messages are stored in fragments, and we may be able to come up with something to address them later. However, the converter now does recover the attachments from sent messages, and they will be written to blank email messages with the current date.

Version 9.8.2 is a maintenance update that includes an improved Entourage converter and a few bug fixes. It’s a free update to all who have access to any 9.x release of Emailchemy. If you are converting Entourage or Outlook PST files, then you should install this update.

The new Entourage converter has increased throughput (i.e. “it’s faster”) because it now keeps the entire database index in memory. This reduces the amount of jumping around the file, and it doesn’t increase the memory requirements significantly because all Entourage database files have known maximum number of items they can hold.

Also, and perhaps more importantly, the new Entourage converter extracts more data. It preserves all message flags (e.g. read/unread, priority, replied-to, forwarded, flagged) and sent attachments now too. Previous versions only preserved received attachments.

The Outlook PST converter was also modified to be a bit more resilient to corrupted PST files. Still, it’s always a good idea to make sure your PST file still works in Outlook before trying to run it through Emailchemy. See our previous post on working with corrupt PST files for more details.

Someone recently wrote in asking how to recover email from a corrupt Entourage Database file and then how to get the email into a new version of Entourage. Specifically, the asker had a file that Entourage 2008 could not import or upgrade from an earlier version, and he had tried all the various methods of rebuilding that Entourage provides. Here is my answer to him, which I thought others would find useful too:

Hi B.,

It sounds like there are a couple questions here, so let me try to address them one at a time.

Regarding corrupt Entourage database files: Emailchemy can still extract messages from generally corrupt databases, but depending on how the file is damaged, it may not get everything out. So, there are a couple of other things you can try.

• Convert the Entourage database file as if it were an Outlook Express 5 for Mac file. You’ll have to do this using Emailchemy’s advanced interface. Doing this will lose all the folders, but it has a good chance of getting more messages out. This works with Database files created by Entourage versions prior to Entourage 2004
• If you have the machine where the old Entourage was running, you can try to grab the cache files that Entourage generates. Emailchemy now has a Entourage Cache conversion wizard that should be able to help.

Regarding how to get the mail into Entourage 2008, there are a few different methods listed in the manual:

• Convert to an Entourage RGE file and then have Entourage import it. This is probably the easiest way.
• Convert to mbox files and then have Entourage import them. It works as well as the first method, but you have to each mbox one at a time (you’ll get an mbox file for each original email folder).
• Convert to IMAP ImportServer format and download the messages into Entourage using an IMAP account that connects to Emailchemy’s IMAP server. This is a fallback that you usually only need for importing into Outlook, but it’s there as an option.

Let me know if this helps, or if you have any more questions.

Thanks,

Matt

Version 9.8.1 is a maintenance update with a few bug fixes and one new feature. It’s a free update to all who have access to any 9.x release of Emailchemy. If you are converting Outlook, Claris Emailer 1.x, or Entourage cache files, then you should install this update.

The new feature is for setting a default sender for Claris Emailer 1.x sent messages that don’t have a sender recorded. Claris Emailer assumed that the email was sent from you, the user of Claris Emailer, so it didn’t (or doesn’t, if there’s anyone still using it) bother to record that bit of information. Having a default sender is a convenience, if anything, so that when you view these messages in another email app, you no longer have to guess who sent them.

Bugs fixed:

• Outlook PST HTML message bodies that define alternate charsets now being transcoded correctly
• Outlook PST attachment file names now being converted to UTF-8 for better handling of international characters
• AOL for Windows wizard no longer case sensitive when searching for PFC files
• Entourage cache files from all versions of Entourage now supported. There were some files from the very earliest Entourage version that were not being picked up.

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.