File:Mail2FM.sit.hqxServer:www.orange-road.comModified:1/17/1999; 10:32:03 PMSize:72KOwner:khagler@orange-road.com Attachments:http://cips02.physik.uni-bonn.de/~radke/ltodbs/system/verbs/apps/Emailer.html
Mail2FM 1.6.7
This is a package that consists of a Frontier suite and a Filemaker Pro 3 database template. The Frontier suite facilitates the importing of digests and mail from Eudora and Emailer into Filemaker. The Filemaker template makes it easy to interact with the mail messages once in the database (including replying, and jumping to URLs). Mail2FM was written by Preston Holmes and Kenneth Hagler, with additional assistance from André Radke and Tom Clifton.Y2K Note
You may find that the year on your messages changes to 1900 after importing into Filemaker Pro. This is the result of a Y2K problem with FMP. When it receives via AppleEvent a date in the system's default abbreviated date format (such as "1/13/00") it mistakenly assumes that the year should be 1900. The solution is to go to the Date and Time control panel, and change your system's date format to "show century." After doing this, the system will abbreviate dates as "1/13/2000", and Filemaker Pro will be able to import the date properly.
Installation
What you need:
To Install, simply double click on the downloaded suite file. A new stationery pad for the Filemaker Pro template will appear on your desktop. You can keep different mailboxes in one database or use different databases for each mailbox, or any combination that you wish. You may keep the Filemaker template(s) anywhere you want on your hard drive. If you choose not to build your list of mailboxes (your mail application needs to be running for this) at the time you install, you will need to do so before using any menu command that may ask you to choose a mailbox.
- FileMaker Pro 3 or greater (template is installed when suite is installed into Frontier)
- Eudora 3 or greater (Pro recommended) Does not work with John Delacour's glue.
or
Emailer 2- Frontier 4.1 or higher Mail2FM is now compatible with Frontier 5. If you use regex with Frontier 5, you will need regex 2.0b6 or latter.
New in this version
This section is for users of previous versions of Mail2FM. New users can skip down to the instructions.Upgrading from earlier Mail2FM versions
This version of Mail2FM has a new database template that adds a "Print" button and printing layout so that mail can be printed out neatly. If you want to take advantage of this new capability, you'll need to import your old Mail2FM database into the new template.Bug Fixes
- Non-regex digest processing code no longer skips the first line after the delimeter. This was causing problems with digests that didn't have a blank line between messages.
- Fixed bug where default date and time were being set to values that FMP wouldn't accept.
How to use
There are several ways to use Mail2FM. The method you use depends on what or how much mail you want to archive, and when. We'll move from basic to complex uses. The simplest way to user Mail2FM is with the "Import current Message" command. This will import the currently open e-mail message into the frontmost Filemaker template. If you don't already have a valid Mail2FM template open, you will be asked to locate one. If you are using Eudora, you will be asked for the name of the mailbox, since this is a standard field in Mail2FM and is something that Mail2FM can not get from Eudora directly. With Emailer, Mail2FM can get the mailbox name by itself. This may be the best approach for someone who just want to keep just a select database of email. The next command in the menu: "Import Mailbox" allows you to import an entire mailbox. It will present you with a choice of mailboxes to import. No special marking of messages is done, and the entire mailbox is imported with this command. Again you must ensure that a valid Mail2FM template database is open in Filemaker before using this command. There are two commands for people who get list mail as digestsBoth digest commands require a database to be open. The suite has been tried with a number of digest formats, but there are likely to be other formats out there. If you encounter problems let me know. New in 1.5: Tasks Gone is the statusScript concept of previous versions. This has been replaced with a new task based approach. A task contains a number of parameters describing:
- "Import Digest" - Use this to select a text file containing a complete digest.
- "Import Digest Mailbox" - Will extract all the digests from a mailbox and try to import each digest.
All these parameters are controlled through the New Task dialog. To open up this dialog, choose "New Task" from the Mail2FM menu. Hopefully the dialog is somewhat self explanatory, it lets you 'fill in the blanks' in the task statement. First choose a mailbox to import. You can then limit which messages are imported based on their age, status, label, and/or priority. For each 'whose' condition you want to use, be sure the checkbox next to that statement is checked. Next choose a database file that these messages should be imported into. You then decide when you want the importing to occur. If you choose now, the task is run when you close the card and then deleted. If you choose a daily time, the task is stored and will be run at the time you specify every day. This is handy for importing mailboxes at night. The last part of the task has to do with what happens to a message once it is imported. You can either delete it, or mark it in some way. The marking feature can be used in tasks to help keep track of which messages have been imported. For example, you can have a task that imports messages whose label is not 7, and then mark the label as 7 once they are imported. This prevents them from being imported twice, without having to delete them from your e-mail application. If you want to apply more conditions on which messages are imported, such as certain authors or subjects, create a Eudora filter (in Emailer, a mail action) to filter those messages into a seperate mailbox and then import that mailbox. Notes
- What mailbox to import
- Which messages in the mailbox to import
- What database to import the messages into
- What to do with the messages once imported
- When to run the task
- Tasks do not work with digest mail.
- You can disable tasks in the Mail2FM menu.
- An easier way to edit tasks is on the to do list ;-)
Working with the mail in Filemaker
The Filemaker layouts included in the template make it easier to manage your mail in Filemaker. There are two main views: a List View and a Reading View. The list view is much like Eudora's TOC windows. You can click on the headings to sort messages. Click on a message to read that message. In read view you can reply to the author or the list (if it comes from a mailing list), and jump to selected URLs (Frontier must be running for these features to work). You can also print the message in a layout similar to the ones used by e-mail apps for printing mail. There are also smaller versions of these layouts for people with 640x480 monitors, such as PowerBook users. To use these layouts, choose "read small" or "listView small" from the layout menu in FileMaker Pro. Once you do this, the smaller layouts will be used unless you switch back to a full-size layout using the layout menu. You can also search the entire database, or find just recent articles. You can also read the current thread - which is all messages of the same subject.Notes:
Importing messages from the out mailbox is not supported yet. This includes outgoing mail that has been filtered into a standard mailbox. Please let me know if you run into a digest format that doesn't work, there are sure to be some since I have only tested this with a few lists. For scripters: the scripts in this suite are very modular - if you have a need to customize the process of moving mail from a mail client to Filemaker you should find them very useful. Each script has a short description at the start and takes several parameters that makes the scripts very flexible and modular. Eudora lacks a lot of scriptability to allow me to build a better interface to this suite. I'm very open to ideas for improvement. The steps I've taken to set the full power of the digest features are the following:
- I use EudoraPro do sort incoming mail. Each digest goes into a mailbox named the same as the list (ie Frontier-talk) which are all in a folder called "Digests" (right now to run the suite as one script you need to do the same).
- Make sure that the status of any digests you want to import is set to "Unread". Also make sure that multipart digests (ones split by eudora) are grouped and all share the same read/unread status.
- Open up the suite then open and run the doItAll() script.
Here is a screen shot of the List View layout. Here is a screen shot of the Reading View layout.
