Courier Email ClientSupport forum for the Courier Email Client.
Mission Statement
WindowsBBS is an online community dedicated to easily accessible technical support for those using Microsoft operating systems and other Windows software.
Our goal is to become the leading resource for computer users that require assistance with their day-to-day computer usage, including full support for networking PC's, virus & malware removal, system upgrades and general support questions.
Two months ago I mentioned on this board that I was working on an export utility for Courier. I'd done a couple of weeks of part-time work on it, and was at a point when I thought I'd "cracked it" (worked out the encryption and general structure of the box file) and still didn't realize how much more there was to do in recreating the messages in standard email formats!
After a lot of help from a few members of this board in testing it with different mailboxes over the past few weeks, "Courex" is now at a stage where we can at least call it version 1.0. That is, it's not necessarily perfect but it should work with the vast majority of mailboxes. The site has quite extensive documentation, which is also included in the download if you don't want to read it all online, so I'll not elaborate here.
I said in my original post that it would be free and it is. However, due to the amount of work involved, I've also made it "donateware". That is, I've provided a mechanism you to "buy me a drink" if you're happy with the results you get from Courex (actually, it's to make my wife feel happier about the long evenings I've spent with the computer instead of with her).
If you're not happy with the results you get from Courex, or if you have any problems in using it, let me know by email or post here and I'll try my best to fix it.
Hi... I can certainly understand why anyone would be frustrated with the lack of development on courier and be interested in an export utility to switch over to another email client. The delays have NOT been for lack of interest, let me assure you. I use courier myself and am not keen on clanging over to new email client. We have just been stuck at Rose City Software because the original developer bailed out and finding a new developer to pick up the pieces especially on something like courier with over 30,000 lines of code is no simple matter. A while ago, however, I began working with a German programmer and he has given me a dozen builds of courier 3.6. I know everyone has heard this before BUT.... I had what was an almost public beta ready build last week except for one bug in the spell check... the developer was working on ironing that one out and I am sincerely hoping to announce a limited beta this week... and I will post it on the forum. For anyone who has been hanging in there, and thankfully I have heard from a lot of you, thanks for your patience and I hope to be announcing a beta for forum users this week (of April 23).
Seems like I've managed to get all my old emails across safely, together with all my addresses.
I thought there was little glitch when I saw that my sent emails had been treated the same as the received ones, ie they all had the sender (me) listed rather than the recipients...
However I found that when I moved them into the Thunderbird Sent folder, they magically re-organised themselves.
I wonder if it is worth mentioning that in your instructions.
Hi... I can certainly understand why anyone would be frustrated with the lack of development on courier and be interested in an export utility to switch over to another email client. The delays have NOT been for lack of interest, let me assure you. I use courier myself and am not keen on clanging over to new email client. We have just been stuck at Rose City Software because the original developer bailed out and finding a new developer to pick up the pieces especially on something like courier with over 30,000 lines of code is no simple matter. A while ago, however, I began working with a German programmer and he has given me a dozen builds of courier 3.6. I know everyone has heard this before BUT.... I had what was an almost public beta ready build last week except for one bug in the spell check... the developer was working on ironing that one out and I am sincerely hoping to announce a limited beta this week... and I will post it on the forum. For anyone who has been hanging in there, and thankfully I have heard from a lot of you, thanks for your patience and I hope to be announcing a beta for forum users this week (of April 23).
well, don't get me wrong, i don't want to sound ungrateful, but i would really like just one thing, that rosecity had never had anything to do with calypso
it would probably end up as open source eventualy...
this way you took the BEST and MOST ADVANCED e-mail application of it's time and locked it in the drawer, oh yeah, you added color tags and renamed it courier. bet that took couple of years
i myself am way beyond optimism, good luck to other participants, i wish you all the luck and that you might prove me wrong
Hi... I can't provide a specific list at this moment... however I will be sending out a beta notice very soon and will post it here on the forum as well. The beta notice will indicate in the developer's own words exactly what has been added and/or needs testing. I may get this posted before end of this week.
I thought there was little glitch when I saw that my sent emails had been treated the same as the received ones, ie they all had the sender (me) listed rather than the recipients... However I found that when I moved them into the Thunderbird Sent folder, they magically re-organised themselves.
Courex actually doesn't distinguish between "sent" and "received" mail, it exports all messages equally. I never bothered to find out if there was a way of reliably distinguishing sent folders from received folders in the Courier database. Thunderbird treats all folders as containing received mail unless they are under the system (non-deletable) "Sent" folder. After export it's up to you to organize the imported folders in Thunderbird (or any other client) appropriately.
Version 1.1 has been subject to more extensive and rigorous testing than was version 1.0, thanks to Manlio Fierro, a Courier user in Rome, who has just about every variation on the email you can imagine in his vast database. Furthermore, he was willing to meticulously test the results obtained by successive versions of Courex. Thanks Manlio!
Having said that, version 1.0 probably handled 90% of mailboxes satisfactorily, so if you've previously used version 1.0 to export your messages, you don't necessarily need to repeat the export with version 1.1, only if you are concerned with any of the following issues addressed in version 1.1:
* Works under Windows 2000, XP and Vista (not earlier versions).
* Now handles separated (saved) attachments.
* Some message folders, previously missed, now detected.
* Fixes "broken" html embedded attachment references.
* Quoted-printable and base64 encoding improved.
* Adds attachment content types when unspecified.
* Corrects some attachment content types.
* Concatinated message handling improved.
* Handling of RFC822 message attachments improved.
* Handling of line terminators (CR & LF) improved.
* Processing of header, especially dates, improved.
* Export log file enhanced to include extra information.
* User interface modified slightly.
* Several other small bug fixes.
* Debug console, accidentally left in, removed.
Note, however, that if you do repeat a version 1.0 export with version 1.1, the resulting mbox files WILL be different if only because of the differences in header handling and quoted-printable encoding. The messages as displayed (in Thunderbird, for example) will probably not be different though, unless you have run into any of the addressed problems.
If you mean the X-Mailer field on sent messages, no it doesn't. The reason is that Courier doesn't save this information in the mailbox as plain text, and Courex deals only with the plain text it finds for the header. Courier doesn't actually store the header as such for sent messages, the header has to be re-constructed from index fields.
Before anyone asks, it doesn't preserve the "X-CalypsoAccount", "X-CalypsoFolder", etc. fields either for the same reason.
For received mail, if the header includes an X-Mailer field it will be preserved on the export, as will all present fields.
If you mean the X-Mailer field on sent messages, no it doesn't. The reason is that Courier doesn't save this information in the mailbox as plain text, and Courex deals only with the plain text it finds for the header. Courier doesn't actually store the header as such for sent messages, the header has to be re-constructed from index fields.
Before anyone asks, it doesn't preserve the "X-CalypsoAccount", "X-CalypsoFolder", etc. fields either for the same reason.
For received mail, if the header includes an X-Mailer field it will be preserved on the export, as will all present fields.
thanks LJ, i wasn't aware of that. i presumed X-CalypsoAccount and X-CalypsoFolder are internal courier headers, but i was sure that like every other agent calypso placed X-Mailer into sent message. thanks for explaining, that's one behaviour i didn't know of and i must say i don't like it
In case I'm misunderstood, I'm sure that Courier DOES send an X-Mailer field with the message (I've received such messages). It's just that it doesn't store the X-Mailer field that it sent as plain text in the BOX file. As I said before, Courier doesn't store a header as such for sent messages, just index information. Most of that index information is in the form of text which can be used to build a reasonable facsimile of the sent header, but the X-Header field contents isn't amongst those text fields. It's quite possible that the Courier version number is amongst the binary information which Courex ignores.
Message list formatted badly in TBird after export
LJ - thanks for Courex!
TBird seems to have a problem with messages exported from Courier. I ran Courex on my Courier mailbox and did a direct-to-Thunderbird export with all the defaults. When I open TB, and examined the message list window, about every other message's subject or From column, or both, looks like the line was over-printed one or more times. The overprinting looks like perhaps TB is picking up another From or Subject line from within the message and writing its text over the legend in the respective column. This happens on nearly every-other message, and in most folders.
That the screen gets garbled is probably a TB bug, but I'm wondering what is coming out of the export that causes it to happen. BTW, I also see this if I archive one folder from within Courier, then copy it into TB's Local Folders.
It turns out to be a Thunderbird issue, apparently not related to Courier or Courex at all. I made a fresh install of TB and POPped some messages directly from Yahoo into TB, and saw the same formatting issue.
This begins to sound like a low-level graphics or graphics interface issue, since the messages were untouched between my Yahoo account and Thunderbird. Yet Courier has never shown anything like this, nor has any other application. So, if anyone has observed anything like it, I'd be grateful to know about it.
