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…the New Yorker used to have an occasional bootnote item called "Letters I never finished reading". Now it should be called "Emails I never finished reading". Here's my contribution:

THIS MONTH'S TOP TIP FROM ALEX

Are you looking for some ideas for using up any left over Chestnut Puree?

I decided Wednesday night that it was time to ditch Eudora for my email. First and foremost, it occasionally decided not to show images in emails, which is nowadays a major pain in the arse. Second, it seemed to crash a lot. Third, as Qualcomm ditched it, there will be no bug fixes and no enhancements. Enough was enough. I had heard some good things about Thunderbird so I decided to try it.

These kinds of migrations have to be planned, however. I had understood that Eudora was kind of flaky when it came to things like standards for .mbx files. So, I searched out a program I'd heard of called Eudora Rescue, which purported to create files that Thunderbird could import more easily and accurately. For example, Thunderbird does not carry over the status (Read, Unread, and the like) from Eudora. This could be disastrous if you have a full inbox.

So, I installed Thunderbird, found and printed out the Eudora Rescue readme file, which is a good example of a readme file that contains exactly the right kind of information to perform a complicated transfer like this. I followed the instructions to the letter, created compatible files from Eudora that Thunderbird was likely to be able to read, and let it rip while I was asleep.

I discovered after breakfast this morning that the import had only gone around 1/2-way. After some futzing around I discovered which file was creating the problem (must be a stray control character) and removed it from the import, restarted the import, and got it finished. But the fun was just beginning.

• I've got a shedload of Eudora filters, none of which were imported along with the mail. I am now faced with creating filters for the next couple of months until all of my mail that I want filtered actually is. I will give them this: the filter-creation mechanism is easy to use. However, each filter works only on one particular mail host. Probably won't cause a problem, but it's surprising.


• When moving an email from one mailbox to one in the sidebar, you drag the email to the top folder, and it then opens up to reveal the folders underneath it. You can then move the email to the one in which you want it to be and drop it there. No problem. However, once you've dropped the email, unlike Eudora, the mailbox tree remains expanded, and you have to contract it manually. Kind of counter intuitive.


• It was a Cecil-B-DeMille production to configure the mail hosts for smooth downloading and sending of emails. But, now that I've got your attention, I can reveal that I've not tried to send emails from all the mail hosts, so I only know that the christianphansen.com address is working for sending. I'm sure that lovely problems await.


• I believe that, while all my attachments are around, the ones imported from Eudora aren't immediately present. I know they're in the "Attach" subdirectory of Eudora Mail, but where they are in Thunderbird beats the hell out of me.


• When you open an email to view and the email has pictures in it, Thunderbird asks you whether you want to show the images and you have to OK a silly window before you can see them. Thunderbird says it'll only be shown the first time you open an email from that sender. Pah! I don't know whether to believe them. After a couple of days, I think I believe them.

(Update early Saturday morning (00:01, to be precise)

I've been using it for a couple of days now. I have figured out the difference between the "Forward/Back" buttons and "Previous/Next" (first set gets to the next/previous mailbox, while the second set gets to the next/previous unread email). To get to the previous email (that you've already read) you have to press "B" on the keyboard, and to get to the next email (that you've already read) you have to press "F" on the keyboard.

I've sent mail from my gmail account (when gmail is up and running) and that seems to work OK. Will have to test the other ones, possibly later on today.

So that's it for Eudora. So long, Eudora! We've been friends for 15 years, but the time has come to part. It's not au revoir, it's don't let the door hit you in the butt on the way out.

I'm getting used to Vista, and have now come across another difficult problem. I use Eudora for email, but when (in Vista) I click on a "mailto" command, it tries to configure Outlook.

I am going to try to uninstall Outlook, but after that I am hoping that Vista will relent and let me "mailto" through Eudora.

Anyone else solved this problem? Am I barking up the right tree?

Those of you who are afflicted with Yahoo! Groups may have found your inboxes stuffed this morning with dozens of duplicate posts. Going to the groups website, I noted that there was a statement referenced on the "Groups Team Blog". Going there, I found the following:

Duplicate Messages and Email Delivery

We're aware of the duplicate message bug that has been affecting groups today and are working to resolve the issue (a side effect of this bug is that some messages are also being delayed). We have actually pushed two fixes already, but we are aware that some groups are still experiencing the problem and that more needs to be done to fully resolve the issue.

There is, however, one silver lining to this bug. It was the result of our latest system updates intended to improve email delivery speeds. So once the bugs are resolved, we should see a significant reduction in the time it takes to deliver messages to Yahoo! Groups members.

We will update this blog entry as soon as we have more definitive information on the status of this issue.

Thank you and our apologies for any inconvenience caused by the duplicate messages.

The Yahoo! Groups Team

P.S. It would be helpful to get reports of duplicate issues if your groups are still experiencing the problem with messages posted (not received) after 8:00 pm PST. If so, please add a comment to the bug letting us know the name of your group and the message numbers of the duplicate messages. Thanks!

Now I understand. Inadequate testing and bugs that actually escape to bother the users are good, as they are harbingers of better things to come.

Bushwah!

Those of you who are currently on, or who have been on, bounce mailing lists such as Yahoo! Groups will be familiar with the person who forgets they're on a list and how to unsubscribe from it. They then send a one line message to the list saying "unsubscribe", but instead of being unsubscribed, the entire list gets the one-line post.

I got a "twist" on this situation from one of my lists today:

On Jan 1, 2006, at 4:01 PM, {name deleted to protect the guilty} wrote:

unsubscribe

{to which someone replied:} Sorry. You are subscribed as a "life member" and your request cannot be completed.

I am really pissed off: my btinternet.com email has been down since last night. Not only do I get no POP feed, but I can't log in to the website to look at it. In addition, Yahoo! email (which runs btinternet email) seems to be down as well.

Good grief. I hope that they're saving it somewhere and not bouncing it back. If they are, I'm switching ISPs.

10:00 am UPDATE: It's now back, as always. No explanation of where it was while it was gone. Something to do with magic, I suppose.