Import to Moz from Pegasus (Moz 1.6)

Topic

New Reply

Around May last year, I moved from Netscape 7.x to Pegasus. I managed to get all my mail moved into Pegasus, mainly from poking around to find the files, moving and renaming them.

Now I’ve decided to move to Mozilla 1.6 (I’m already using Firebird), and would really, really like to have my mail files where I can get at them.

So far:
I’ve copied the Peg. files to a folder in the Local Folders of MozMail. (renaming them to (no extension) and *.smf.)
I’ve opened a new account, with the local directory set to Pegasus (or) the no-extension modified files.

Search in the Lounge shows some issues of moving mail files around, but nothing helps. Paging through Mozillazine & Mozilla’s discussions didn’t help.

So, what am I missing beyond a lost Saturday morning?

Errol

Reply | Quote

Replies

[indent]

---

…I’ve copied the Peg. files to a folder in the Local Folders of MozMail…

---

[/indent] Don’t think you want to do that, Errol You should put the files in the Mail folder of your Mozilla profile that has the same name as whatever POP server name you use. Starting in the Documents and Settings folder for your logon, drill down through Application Data, Mozilla, Profiles, (Username), to the mail folder and look for a folder with the same name as your POP server. Come on back if need be…..

Reply | Quote

[indent]

---

…I’ve copied the Peg. files to a folder in the Local Folders of MozMail…

---

[/indent] Don’t think you want to do that, Errol You should put the files in the Mail folder of your Mozilla profile that has the same name as whatever POP server name you use. Starting in the Documents and Settings folder for your logon, drill down through Application Data, Mozilla, Profiles, (Username), to the mail folder and look for a folder with the same name as your POP server. Come on back if need be…..

Reply | Quote

Doc Al,
Thanks for the help. I’ve already done this file move. I’ve put a “PMAIL” folder into the POP-server location as you suggested. I get a long list of files with names like “FOL01B1C” in my Mozilla files. (Not a problem. I’ve opened this one and know it’s my “sent” mail.) But when I select this new folder it seems to be empty, according to Mozilla Mail, even when I remove the file extension as Mozilla likes.

(Not quite the dummy – the original Peg. files remain untouched. I’m working with copies ’till the thing works.)

Errol

Reply | Quote

First of all, let’s get this out of the way. Forget about the .MSF files (you said .smf) and just copy or move the files with no extension. I have to believe it is a problem with the location into which you’ve put the files and what profile you’re running when you open Mozilla. If you’ve copied the “plain text files” into the correct POP location, Mozilla should show you the messages and re-create the MSF files.

Reply | Quote

I have put a copy of the Pegasus Mail folder in all the nooks and crannies of the directory. The best I can get in the Mozilla Mail folder windows is the file names (no extension). For now I’m using only a few files. This image shows what I get.

Errol

Reply | Quote

Uh Oh, I think (hope) I may have it. Your clue was “…put a copy of the Pegasus Mail folder…” I don’t think you can do that. You need to be IN Mozilla mail and CREATE a new folder while there. So, highlight the entry that says NewErrolv… etc. and right-click. Select New Folder – of course you can’t use the Peg…. name or it will screw up with an error. Just call it Old Msgs or something. Now close the program. Move the files to THAT folder and re-open the program. Lemme know…..

Reply | Quote

No joy here.

unkamunka’s link processed the files, but in Netscape the folders were empty.

I even found a conversion tool (Pegasus to *.mbx) from Eric Miller That worked, OE imported the files as folders, but could not import the messages themselves. Long way around: Pegasus -> Outlook Express -> Mozilla

I have moved the Pegasus message files before/after making new Mozilla accounts and folders, and, even held my tongue in that way that works when I’m adjusting the TV antenna.

Tried moving everything out of Pegasus Trays, to one big list. Any more ideas?

Overall, I think/hope the messages get converted, and there’s a problem I’m having in getting Mozilla to recognize the files.

Errol

P.S. How come “unkamunka” gets past the spell checker, but “Mozilla” doesn’t?

Reply | Quote

I’m beginning to think there’s more to this than meets the eye. Would you try a little experiment with me? If you open one of the message FILES, the ones with no extension, with a plain-text editor like Notepad, are you able to see what looks like a combination of HTML and plain text? In other words, is the stuff “readable? I’m beginning to think we’re wrestling with something more than a data reading problem.

Reply | Quote

Al,
Experiment complete.

I get all the headers, the HTML, etc. The very first line of the file (in Notepad) is the traditional “From – Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 1996”.

Is the absence of *.msf files important?

Errol

Reply | Quote

Boy, Errol, I’m absolutely out of ideas. No, the MSF files are not that important. They control the sort order of the messages and other stuff that you can reset at any time. Did you do what I suggested in post #332461 up above?

Reply | Quote

Yes, I started with that, and tried every combination of placing files in MozMail folders before/after/during opening MozMail — in accounts, account folders, sub folders, their own folder, etc. My mail window would show the folder names (“FC080C” stuff) but they were all empty.

An interesting thing: I used a program to convert to *.MBX. Even outlook Express couldn’t /wouldn’t open them. (by importing or folder shuffling.)

Errol

Reply | Quote

This post is not only for your interest, Errol, but for other Loungers who need to be brought up to speed on what we’ve done. I asked Errol to send me a copy of a Pegasus email file that wouldn’t breach his privacy and confidentiality, so I could do a little hacking with MY copy of Mozilla. I just want to keep Errol and other Loungers up to speed that I have had SUCCESS in reading his mail file into my Mozilla 1.5 and now, since I worked rather speedily and didn’t make notes, I need to backtrack on what I did so I can report here. Errol, don’t “throw away” those Pegasus files, ’cause you should be able to use them. Lemme try to write down what I did, and then I’ll be back. Here’s a “proud snapshot” for your edification!

Reply | Quote

This post is not only for your interest, Errol, but for other Loungers who need to be brought up to speed on what we’ve done. I asked Errol to send me a copy of a Pegasus email file that wouldn’t breach his privacy and confidentiality, so I could do a little hacking with MY copy of Mozilla. I just want to keep Errol and other Loungers up to speed that I have had SUCCESS in reading his mail file into my Mozilla 1.5 and now, since I worked rather speedily and didn’t make notes, I need to backtrack on what I did so I can report here. Errol, don’t “throw away” those Pegasus files, ’cause you should be able to use them. Lemme try to write down what I did, and then I’ll be back. Here’s a “proud snapshot” for your edification!

Reply | Quote

Good morning, Errol! The start of another day, so let’s have at it. I’m going to try to be as brief as possible here, but the first thing is to make a copy of any files to get rid of those “folder” names and file extensions. Just make sure each file has a name with NO file extension. Now, as I think I said earlier, open Mozilla mail, right-click on the mail account name and select the making of a new folder, creating folder names that MATCH the names you gave the files. Mozilla mail will create two files for each folder you make: FILENAME and FILENAME.MSF and each of the FILENAME files should start out as zero byte files. By the way, for cleanliness sake, you might also want to delete any garbage folders that you tried earlier which didn’t work (just for neatness sake)! Close Mozilla mail.

Now comes the tricky part. If all of your files are similar to the one you sent me, there’s some EDITING that needs to be done. Use a text editor of you choosing, but be careful. I normally use NotePad Light but it wouldn’t let me edit because it “thinks” the file is binary. You’ll see why in a minute. So, I used Notepad and I can’t remember if the current Notepad has a file SIZE maximum so we need to be careful there. You could use Word or WordPad or whatever, just make sure that whatever you use doesn’t do any line wrapping and that you SAVE the files as plain text. If you use something that insists on adding a FILENAME.TXT you can always rename later, to eliminate the TXT extension. The file we pass to Mozilla mail MUST have no file extension!

As you know, a single mail “file” may contain MANY individual messages, as in the test file you sent me. It contains 13 messages. Mozilla expects each message to start out with the following characters – in hex it’s 0D, 0A (carriage return, line feed) and then the following: From – (that’s the word “From”, followed by space, hyphen, space) . In the test file you sent, Pegasus has inserted other stuff that needs to be edited out of the file. I made this attachment intentionally narrow for Lounge purposes, so the first TWO lines are wrapped, where they will not be when you open your editor. The red rectangle is what needs to be deleted, so the message starts with the “From – ” that I indicated. (The first message doesn’t have the carriage return, line feed combo)

The second part of the screenshot shows an ASCII character 1A at the beginning of each succeeding message that also needs to be removed. The character, when viewed in your editor will probably show up as a small square box. What I did next I hope you can duplicate. I copied one of those box character (the 1A) by highlighting it and using Ctrl-C to get it on the clipboard. I then used Search and Replace, to replace ” From – ” with a plain old ” From – ”

Save the file as TEXT and then copy the files into the Mozilla mail folder, replacing the ones that Mozilla created. Now, hopefully, when you re-open mail, you should see the messages. I must tell you that I did this test three different times and on one of the tries, Mozilla popped up an hourglass when I clicked on the name and it stayed and stayed, failing to show me the number of messages. I got a bit frustrated and hit the delete key to put the file in Trash, as which time Mozilla then showed me the messages. I couldn’t believe what happened, so I dragged the file back out of Trash and it still sitting there, quite readable now. I hope that doesn’t happen to you, but it might be wise to try YOUR hand at this with only one file for the first go at this. Please let me know how you make out, and I’m sorry for the length of this post!

Reply | Quote

Al,
First, let me congratulate you on being elevated to Moderator You can see it happen in this thread : Your 20-Jan-04 14:06 post shows WMVP, and your 21-Jan-04 05:34 post has your new “badge” of Moderator WMVP, and official recognition by da Boss . My particular issue is a great example of how you earned an extra rocker on those stripes.

Now for the fly in the ointment. The huge amount of poking and prodding works wonderfully for many of the folders. But methinks there’s more than one format in Pegasus files. I have several folders that do not have the “From – ” business at all! I have some folders with mixed “From -” messages and non-“From -” ones. They also use a non-printing character (I assume ASCII 1A) right with the Return-path line. And no CR-LF blank line separating messages. I assumed I could merely add the necessary lines, and all would be organized. No dice. The non-Mozilla messages get lumped into one huge message. Including the ASCII coding of attachment files. See below. I’m going to email you one of these other style of Pegasus files. These new format messages might be native Pegasus messages, written into folders already holding Netscape messages, and of course, folders created in Pegasus.

Rant On
I was surprised that Pegasus works this way. It was just a bit of sweat to move my Netscape mail folders into Pegasus. Now, that I want to move to Mozilla, it turns out that Pegasus mail folders to not hold to any standard format, making it nearly impossible to export them. I Google searched for a converter program. The free ones, at least do not work (at least for me). Since this is a one-shot deal for me, I’m not looking to spend much
Rant Off

Reply | Quote

I’ll take a look as soon as I can, but I’m not too optimistic on this one. That’s a strange looking file and there doesn’t seem to be any consistency to it. It may be awhile…..

Reply | Quote

Not my intention to “have you fix it”, Al. My last posting was also just to point out that Pegasus isn’t as simple as we thought. Once I figure out Mozilla’s file format, I can massage the Pegasus files to match.

Thanks for your interest, though!

So, does anyone have a link or know about the internal format for Mozilla mail folders? The Moz.org sites aren’t easily forthcoming.

Errol

Reply | Quote

Ahh, but it’s the challenge, my friend, the challenge… It’s just been kinda busy around me lately – a karma thing I suppose. [indent]

---

…does anyone have a link or know about the internal format for Mozilla mail folders?…

---

[/indent] Now there’s a REALLY good challenge. Not being at all into programming, I’ve never looked either, but it seems it must be a header-footer kinda thing. The reason I say that is the fact that incoming mail could be in all kinds of formats, depending on the client of the sender. I do have Pegasus installed but only used it for a short time, so I’m looking from that angle. Hang in there…..

Reply | Quote

So, far, I have found this disheartening quote: “there is no true specification of this [*.mbx/Netscape] file format, just a collection of word-of-mouth behaviors of the various programs over the last few decades which have used that format” in an old (1996) discussion thread on Netscape Support Documentation. (Interesting note: Just how many “decades” have there been so far? )

I have 35 folders and lots of messages. Some of the older folders work by just removing that ASCII 1A character from “”From -“, some need the 1A removed from “Return-path” and adding a “From” line. I’m doing this a step at a time, checking each adjustment to make sure it works. So far, so good.

Errol

Reply | Quote

So, far, I have found this disheartening quote: “there is no true specification of this [*.mbx/Netscape] file format, just a collection of word-of-mouth behaviors of the various programs over the last few decades which have used that format” in an old (1996) discussion thread on Netscape Support Documentation. (Interesting note: Just how many “decades” have there been so far? )

I have 35 folders and lots of messages. Some of the older folders work by just removing that ASCII 1A character from “”From -“, some need the 1A removed from “Return-path” and adding a “From” line. I’m doing this a step at a time, checking each adjustment to make sure it works. So far, so good.

Errol

Reply | Quote

Well, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, and I don’t think it’s a train.

It seems the native format for Pegasus simply is having that 1A () character as a message separator. When Pegasus “inhales” .Mbox/Mozilla format, it adds that to the From – Wed May 13 14:25:56 2003 line, and that’s it. For new “native Pegasus” messages, however, there is no From – line, just that 1A, and that usually begins the Return-path line. And MANY times, there is no blank line between messages – even it the From – line is present.

So, the manual method of converting Pegasus mail files back to Mozilla includes search/replace the From- with From –, finding the other Return-path: lines, then sticking in a blank line and a From – line above the Return-path lines. Then the method Al describes to move existing files into Mozilla Mail applies.

Some additional observations:
1. Several of my messages have the last bit chopped off. The last line may end in the middle of a sentence, and suddenly the next message starts. I don’t know if the balance of the message is somewhere else, or just gone. I don’t see any rhyme or reason for this.

2. Mozilla stores attachments with the message, and you have a long section of alphabetic gibberish in the message as the attachment. Pegasus, on the other hand, merely lists the directory path to the file attached. I’m sure that’s done to save file space, but I figure you could break the connection between the message and the file you sent. (Having sent the file you could change your copy, move it, or delete it. Then you have no recourse to the attachment your recipient is looking at.)

I developed a simple Word macro to handle some of the search and replace chores.

I figure the Case of the Pegzilla transfer is closed. Many thanks to Moderator Al for his help.

Errol

Reply | Quote

Hey, Great Job, Errol! What a detective you are – look out Colombo.

Reply | Quote

Hey, Great Job, Errol! What a detective you are – look out Colombo.

Reply | Quote

Well, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, and I don’t think it’s a train.

It seems the native format for Pegasus simply is having that 1A () character as a message separator. When Pegasus “inhales” .Mbox/Mozilla format, it adds that to the From – Wed May 13 14:25:56 2003 line, and that’s it. For new “native Pegasus” messages, however, there is no From – line, just that 1A, and that usually begins the Return-path line. And MANY times, there is no blank line between messages – even it the From – line is present.

So, the manual method of converting Pegasus mail files back to Mozilla includes search/replace the From- with From –, finding the other Return-path: lines, then sticking in a blank line and a From – line above the Return-path lines. Then the method Al describes to move existing files into Mozilla Mail applies.

Some additional observations:
1. Several of my messages have the last bit chopped off. The last line may end in the middle of a sentence, and suddenly the next message starts. I don’t know if the balance of the message is somewhere else, or just gone. I don’t see any rhyme or reason for this.

2. Mozilla stores attachments with the message, and you have a long section of alphabetic gibberish in the message as the attachment. Pegasus, on the other hand, merely lists the directory path to the file attached. I’m sure that’s done to save file space, but I figure you could break the connection between the message and the file you sent. (Having sent the file you could change your copy, move it, or delete it. Then you have no recourse to the attachment your recipient is looking at.)

I developed a simple Word macro to handle some of the search and replace chores.

I figure the Case of the Pegzilla transfer is closed. Many thanks to Moderator Al for his help.

Errol

Reply | Quote

Ahh, but it’s the challenge, my friend, the challenge… It’s just been kinda busy around me lately – a karma thing I suppose. [indent]

---

…does anyone have a link or know about the internal format for Mozilla mail folders?…

---

[/indent] Now there’s a REALLY good challenge. Not being at all into programming, I’ve never looked either, but it seems it must be a header-footer kinda thing. The reason I say that is the fact that incoming mail could be in all kinds of formats, depending on the client of the sender. I do have Pegasus installed but only used it for a short time, so I’m looking from that angle. Hang in there…..

Reply | Quote

Not my intention to “have you fix it”, Al. My last posting was also just to point out that Pegasus isn’t as simple as we thought. Once I figure out Mozilla’s file format, I can massage the Pegasus files to match.

Thanks for your interest, though!

So, does anyone have a link or know about the internal format for Mozilla mail folders? The Moz.org sites aren’t easily forthcoming.

Errol

Reply | Quote

I’ll take a look as soon as I can, but I’m not too optimistic on this one. That’s a strange looking file and there doesn’t seem to be any consistency to it. It may be awhile…..

Reply | Quote

Good morning, Errol! The start of another day, so let’s have at it. I’m going to try to be as brief as possible here, but the first thing is to make a copy of any files to get rid of those “folder” names and file extensions. Just make sure each file has a name with NO file extension. Now, as I think I said earlier, open Mozilla mail, right-click on the mail account name and select the making of a new folder, creating folder names that MATCH the names you gave the files. Mozilla mail will create two files for each folder you make: FILENAME and FILENAME.MSF and each of the FILENAME files should start out as zero byte files. By the way, for cleanliness sake, you might also want to delete any garbage folders that you tried earlier which didn’t work (just for neatness sake)! Close Mozilla mail.

Now comes the tricky part. If all of your files are similar to the one you sent me, there’s some EDITING that needs to be done. Use a text editor of you choosing, but be careful. I normally use NotePad Light but it wouldn’t let me edit because it “thinks” the file is binary. You’ll see why in a minute. So, I used Notepad and I can’t remember if the current Notepad has a file SIZE maximum so we need to be careful there. You could use Word or WordPad or whatever, just make sure that whatever you use doesn’t do any line wrapping and that you SAVE the files as plain text. If you use something that insists on adding a FILENAME.TXT you can always rename later, to eliminate the TXT extension. The file we pass to Mozilla mail MUST have no file extension!

As you know, a single mail “file” may contain MANY individual messages, as in the test file you sent me. It contains 13 messages. Mozilla expects each message to start out with the following characters – in hex it’s 0D, 0A (carriage return, line feed) and then the following: From – (that’s the word “From”, followed by space, hyphen, space) . In the test file you sent, Pegasus has inserted other stuff that needs to be edited out of the file. I made this attachment intentionally narrow for Lounge purposes, so the first TWO lines are wrapped, where they will not be when you open your editor. The red rectangle is what needs to be deleted, so the message starts with the “From – ” that I indicated. (The first message doesn’t have the carriage return, line feed combo)

The second part of the screenshot shows an ASCII character 1A at the beginning of each succeeding message that also needs to be removed. The character, when viewed in your editor will probably show up as a small square box. What I did next I hope you can duplicate. I copied one of those box character (the 1A) by highlighting it and using Ctrl-C to get it on the clipboard. I then used Search and Replace, to replace ” From – ” with a plain old ” From – ”

Save the file as TEXT and then copy the files into the Mozilla mail folder, replacing the ones that Mozilla created. Now, hopefully, when you re-open mail, you should see the messages. I must tell you that I did this test three different times and on one of the tries, Mozilla popped up an hourglass when I clicked on the name and it stayed and stayed, failing to show me the number of messages. I got a bit frustrated and hit the delete key to put the file in Trash, as which time Mozilla then showed me the messages. I couldn’t believe what happened, so I dragged the file back out of Trash and it still sitting there, quite readable now. I hope that doesn’t happen to you, but it might be wise to try YOUR hand at this with only one file for the first go at this. Please let me know how you make out, and I’m sorry for the length of this post!

Reply | Quote

Yes, I started with that, and tried every combination of placing files in MozMail folders before/after/during opening MozMail — in accounts, account folders, sub folders, their own folder, etc. My mail window would show the folder names (“FC080C” stuff) but they were all empty.

An interesting thing: I used a program to convert to *.MBX. Even outlook Express couldn’t /wouldn’t open them. (by importing or folder shuffling.)

Errol

Reply | Quote

Boy, Errol, I’m absolutely out of ideas. No, the MSF files are not that important. They control the sort order of the messages and other stuff that you can reset at any time. Did you do what I suggested in post #332461 up above?

Reply | Quote

I’m beginning to think there’s more to this than meets the eye. Would you try a little experiment with me? If you open one of the message FILES, the ones with no extension, with a plain-text editor like Notepad, are you able to see what looks like a combination of HTML and plain text? In other words, is the stuff “readable? I’m beginning to think we’re wrestling with something more than a data reading problem.

Reply | Quote

No joy here.

unkamunka’s link processed the files, but in Netscape the folders were empty.

I even found a conversion tool (Pegasus to *.mbx) from Eric Miller That worked, OE imported the files as folders, but could not import the messages themselves. Long way around: Pegasus -> Outlook Express -> Mozilla

I have moved the Pegasus message files before/after making new Mozilla accounts and folders, and, even held my tongue in that way that works when I’m adjusting the TV antenna.

Tried moving everything out of Pegasus Trays, to one big list. Any more ideas?

Overall, I think/hope the messages get converted, and there’s a problem I’m having in getting Mozilla to recognize the files.

Errol

P.S. How come “unkamunka” gets past the spell checker, but “Mozilla” doesn’t?

Reply | Quote

Uh Oh, I think (hope) I may have it. Your clue was “…put a copy of the Pegasus Mail folder…” I don’t think you can do that. You need to be IN Mozilla mail and CREATE a new folder while there. So, highlight the entry that says NewErrolv… etc. and right-click. Select New Folder – of course you can’t use the Peg…. name or it will screw up with an error. Just call it Old Msgs or something. Now close the program. Move the files to THAT folder and re-open the program. Lemme know…..

Reply | Quote

It sounds to me as if the mail folders have incurred some kind of formatting that Mozilla does not recognise. Try using the conversion program listed at http://www.dragon-it.co.uk/pegasus.htm%5B/url%5D. HTH

Reply | Quote

It sounds to me as if the mail folders have incurred some kind of formatting that Mozilla does not recognise. Try using the conversion program listed at http://www.dragon-it.co.uk/pegasus.htm%5B/url%5D. HTH

Reply | Quote

I have put a copy of the Pegasus Mail folder in all the nooks and crannies of the directory. The best I can get in the Mozilla Mail folder windows is the file names (no extension). For now I’m using only a few files. This image shows what I get.

Errol

Reply | Quote

First of all, let’s get this out of the way. Forget about the .MSF files (you said .smf) and just copy or move the files with no extension. I have to believe it is a problem with the location into which you’ve put the files and what profile you’re running when you open Mozilla. If you’ve copied the “plain text files” into the correct POP location, Mozilla should show you the messages and re-create the MSF files.

Reply | Quote

Doc Al,
Thanks for the help. I’ve already done this file move. I’ve put a “PMAIL” folder into the POP-server location as you suggested. I get a long list of files with names like “FOL01B1C” in my Mozilla files. (Not a problem. I’ve opened this one and know it’s my “sent” mail.) But when I select this new folder it seems to be empty, according to Mozilla Mail, even when I remove the file extension as Mozilla likes.

(Not quite the dummy – the original Peg. files remain untouched. I’m working with copies ’till the thing works.)

Errol

Reply | Quote