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plate
Bodhisattva
Joined: 25 Jul 2002
Posts: 1663
Location: Berlin
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 Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2003 4:21 am Post subject: MUA slut wants to repent - IMAP to the rescue? |
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There was a time when I could afford to be picky about the mail client I was using. But things have grown into too much of a productive chaos, and I'm sick of losing access to my older emails each time I switch, due to matching export/import routines either completely absent or insufficiently implemented. I am the ubernoob when it comes to daemon setups of any kind, but I'd like to try that courier/squirrel/apache combo that looks like a factory default Gentooism... So, I've started reading the manuals, howtos, bug reports, forum threads (a search for "imap" returns 318 (now 319) of those...) that'll be required to make me feel comfortable about this whole thing, but up front I would beg the knowledgeable faction of this forum to answer my most burning questions:
- My mail archive (1998-2002) is spread over thousands of emails in Outlook Express folders (.dbx format) and Sylpheed mail directories (only a few dozen messages overlap). How would I go about importing all those into an IMAP server?
- I'm using a variety of operating systems and mail clients on different desktop computers at home and in the office, plus two notebooks, a PDA and the occasional public web terminal whenever I'm in the wild. I know I can access all the incoming mail on an IMAP server from any of the above, but how can I synchronise everything outgoing to and fro some central storage, no matter where I send it from? NB: I'd like to avoid bcc'ing to myself all the time...
- With the number of mail accounts and MUA clients I'm currently using, all of them set up to download new messages at certain intervals, I occasionally get lockups on the POP3 server (which allows only one session at a time). Can I have concurrent sessions on an IMAP server?
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turbobri
n00b
Joined: 07 Oct 2002
Posts: 14
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| Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2003 5:46 am Post subject: Re: MUA slut wants to repent - IMAP to the rescue? |
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| plate wrote: | My mail archive (1998-2002) is spread over thousands of emails in Outlook Express folders (.dbx format) and Sylpheed mail directories (only a few dozen messages overlap). How would I go about importing all those into an IMAP server?
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Once you have your IMAP server set up, add a new account to Outlook Express for it. Then you can just drag & drop the emails from OE's local storage to the IMAP folders. I'm not familiar with Sylpheed, but it can probably do the same.
| plate wrote: | I'm using a variety of operating systems and mail clients on different desktop computers at home and in the office, plus two notebooks, a PDA and the occasional public web terminal whenever I'm in the wild. I know I can access all the incoming mail on an IMAP server from any of the above, but how can I synchronise everything outgoing to and fro some central storage, no matter where I send it from? NB: I'd like to avoid bcc'ing to myself all the time...
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I'm not quite sure what you are getting at there, but any "outgoing" mail should either get sent immediately, or just queued until you are connected (in the case of a PDA). If you are talking about automatically saving a copy in a "Sent Items" folder, that will be client specific and you will have to deal with that on a per-client basis. Remember, everything is centrally stored on the IMAP server, so the whole idea of syncing with multiple clients is a non-issue. All clients will see whatever is on the server. As long as you configure each client to save a copy into the proper "Sent Items" folder, then you are good to go.
| plate wrote: | With the number of mail accounts and MUA clients I'm currently using, all of them set up to download new messages at certain intervals, I occasionally get lockups on the POP3 server (which allows only one session at a time). Can I have concurrent sessions on an IMAP server?
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The IMAP server itself should be fine. Sometimes I have seen issues where one mail client might complain because it is trying to display an email that you deleted from another mail client a few seconds ago. Some mail clients handle it much better than others, and will figure it out on their own or with a simple refresh. You may simply want to rethink your strategy, why do you need so many different mail clients running at the same time?
Also I would like to suggest looking into Horde/IMP for the webmail. It's a bit more work to get set up than SquirrelMail but the interface is really slick and professional looking. |
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plate
Bodhisattva
Joined: 25 Jul 2002
Posts: 1663
Location: Berlin
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| Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2003 7:01 am Post subject: |
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| Thanks a lot! Very helpful, particularly the simple truth that "Sent items" will get stored on the IMAP server too. I was hoping they would, but couldn't find anything that confirmed this for me (I've never really used IMAP myself). I'll check the IMP, but I may end up having to use something like IlohaMail, because of the Japanese support. This, by the way, is for the same reasons as the multiple clients grabbing mail concurrently: Some of my accounts are shared, sort of secretary/helpdesk email addresses that are being accessed not just by me but several other people as well. I'd rethink my own strategy anytime, but I can't tell others what MUA to use... |
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turbobri
n00b
Joined: 07 Oct 2002
Posts: 14
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| Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2003 3:09 pm Post subject: |
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| I think IMAP will work out well for the shared account situation. Also I believe IMP supports a lot of different langauges, but I am not sure about Japanese. |
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