Exporting Email

[rjmurray01]

I have an Audiovox 6600 Pocket PC Cellphone. I want to be able to export or archive my email. Without being too confusing, I use my phone as my primary source for email. Through POP and SMTP access, I have an account called Yahoo which pulls and sends email from my Yahoo email account. The problem is that when I send mail I save a copy on my phone. It sends the mail through the Yahoo server but does not save a copy of the sent email in my Sent Folder on Yahoo.com (on the internet, not on the phone). I can sync an account called Outlook on my phone with Outlook on my PC, but it doesn’t contain the mail I send through Yahoo account, and I can’t move mail from one account to another. So, I am looking for a versatile email client that will sync up my Yahoo account on the phone with my PC, so I can then archive and later retrieve that email (on my PC) without it consuming storage memory on my phone. I hope I have been clear, this is a little confusing to explain. Please let me know if you have any suggestions.

[Menneisyys]

I have an Audiovox 6600 Pocket PC Cellphone. I want to be able to export or archive my email. Without being too confusing, I use my phone as my primary source for email. Through POP and SMTP access, I have an account called Yahoo which pulls and sends email from my Yahoo email account. The problem is that when I send mail I save a copy on my phone. It sends the mail through the Yahoo server but does not save a copy of the sent email in my Sent Folder on Yahoo.com (on the internet, not on the phone). I can sync an account called Outlook on my phone with Outlook on my PC, but it doesn’t contain the mail I send through Yahoo account, and I can’t move mail from one account to another. So, I am looking for a versatile email client that will sync up my Yahoo account on the phone with my PC, so I can then archive and later retrieve that email (on my PC) without it consuming storage memory on my phone. I hope I have been clear, this is a little confusing to explain. Please let me know if you have any suggestions.

To be able to download Yahoo Mail to your phone, you need POP3 access to Yahoo, which isn't included in the free version.

For this, you'll need Yahoo! Mail Plus, which cosyts $20 for a year. Click 'Mail Upgrades' in the top right corner to access it.

Once you have POP3 access, you can archive your online mailbox both with your PDA and your Outlook.

If you choose archiving with the built-in Messaging client on your PDA, you will only need to archive the contents of the \Windows\Messaging directory. Here, your mails are stored one-by-one. Please note that POP3-downloaded mail is stored together with its headers, unlike with ActiveSync-synchornized mail (http://www.firstloox.org//forums/showthread.php?t=2918). The latter is stored without headers, which must be read from the related WinCE system database.

Also note that your sent mail is also stored there, but without headers (not even the addressee); also, their filename isn't necessarily (much) dirfferent from Inbox mail.

An example:

this is an Outbox mail body: 070025ec1000001f.mpb
and this an Inbox mail header+body file: 0700255381030102.mpb

Therefore, if you also want to archive outbox mail with all the necessary information (Addressee), you may want to read the above-linked description of how the WinCE system databases store mail headers and identify mail bodies (http://www.firstloox.org//forums/showthread.php?t=2918).

WebIS Mail is completely different - it, like the Unix-based Mailbox, uses only one file for storing incoming mail. Therefore, it's much easier to archive it. However, it doesn't use the Mailbox format (but some binary format) AFAIK, so, it's possible you'll only be able to read your archived files with WebIS Mail.

Let me know if you have further q's.

[rjmurray01]

I have Resco File Explorer and don't know why I didn't think to rummage around and file where the files were saves (\\windows\messaging). I just copied my Messaging directory to My Documents so it would ActiveSync to my PC. I don't know if I will be able to read them in the MPB format, but at least I can back up those files to save the data in case I decide later to delete old email messages or lose them through a system glich or something. 1) I do know all about POP/SMTP access through Yahoo and have that set up already. 2) I will play with these files to see if I can read them with a text editor like Word or Notepad. 3) If I can't read them, are you suggesting that other programs like WebIS might be able to read them (on PC) or are you saying that if I install WebIS on my phone and use that to read my email that I'll somehow be able to transfer the mail from my phone to PC and can read in on the PC with WebIS? Some of these questions may either be answered or clarified as I play with these files. At least it's a start. I'll be back in the next day or two with more questions that I am sure I'll have. Thanks again for your help on this!

[rjmurray01]

Well, the good news is that most of the files can be opened as a text file. Some couldn't, were encrypted or something, but of the 6-8 files I opened, I could read all but two. Further good news is that (I think) all the header information is there with the message. It includes all the sender, recipient, date/time and subject info. the bad news is twofold but related: 1) the file name and date of the file has no discernable bearing on the date/time/sender/subject of the email, and 2) while the header contains all the information, it is in a bunch of system/IP gobbley-gook and not nearly as orderly as it appears in any email program.

Again, I may try WebIS or another of the programs you suggest and maybe that'll be the missing link. Until then, though, I am glad merely to have the data to be able to refer to it later if I ever need to do so.

[Menneisyys]

1) the file name and date of the file has no discernable bearing on the date/time/sender/subject of the email


Yup. I may write a utility that renames all these files, according to the sender/subject/date.

while the header contains all the information, it is in a bunch of system/IP gobbley-gook and not nearly as orderly as it appears in any email program.


That's true too - all the RFC headers are there. However, if you need date/time/sender/subject-only headers, let me know and I quickly write a free utility that converts all your .mpb files to have these standardized headers only.

[rjmurray01]

well, that'd be very cool, but I hate to have you do anything. I am at work and haven't had much chance to play with it. In the beginning, when I posted, I was just hopeful that there would be a good email client that would be all-inclusive, have all the bells and whistles that I needed. Preferably some utility that would allow me to move email from one account to another. Then I could just move all my Yahoo Account mail (on my phone) to my Outlook Account (on my phone), then I could ActiveSync right into Outlook on my PC. Actually, I was surprised that there weren't a ton a clients out there. Seems like that would be a relatively easy GUI to create since it builds off the actual Messaging application.

[rjmurray01]

I downloaded WebIS Mail which seemed to work okay (for future Yahoo-related messages) but I still had a problem with archiving the existing Sent email on my phone (which had been sent through Yahoo). I found that Intellisync can sync any account email, and not just the default "Outlook" account email like ActiveSync. WebIS Mail cost around $25 and Intellisync is around $70. Pretty pricey, but with Intellisync I can continue to use my normal Messaging software which is tried and true at this point. Anyway, thanks for the input.