FAQ pages:
A. Unfortunately, certain anti-virus products – especially those using proactive protection – frequently generate false positives when scanning programs. In other words, they think a file contains a virus or other malware when there is none. You may experience this issue with our products too.
All our products are uploaded to the Internet virus-free. If you have downloaded the software from our website, our online store, or a reputable software repository, then you can be confident it did not come with a virus. However, a virus on your computer may have infected our software after installation. If you are sure your computer has no virus, then any warning you are getting on our software is probably a false positive.
If you encounter a false positive, make sure you inform the company of your anti-virus product so they can fix the issue in their next maintenance release. Until the issue is fixed, you may be able to white-list the software that is affected by the false positive, or turn off proactive protection in your anti-virus product.
A. The numbered trial tag is only inserted in message subjects when emails are converted during trial mode. After you activate your license with your purchased code, all trial limitations are removed from the Aid4Mail software.
A. Please refer to the list of supported file formats and mail clients. If you don't find the name of your mail client there, check whether it can export or import from one of the formats that Aid4Mail supports. Many lesser-known mail programs can import from or export to mbox mailbox files, which Aid4Mail supports.
A. First install Aid4Mail version 2 on your old computer and activate your license. On your old computer, use Aid4Mail to convert your source mail to the Aid4Mail ZIP Archive format. Next, transfer the resulting ZIP file to your new computer and install Aid4Mail on it; then re-activate your license. Finally, use Aid4Mail on your new computer to export your ZIP Archive contents to your new mail program.
A. The steps depend on which Aid4Mail license you purchased:
Aid4Mail Professional, Forensic, Enterprise:
First install Aid4Mail on your old computer and activate your license. On your old computer, use Aid4Mail to convert your source mail to the Aid4Mail ZIP Archive format. Next, transfer the resulting ZIP file to your new computer and install Aid4Mail on it; then re-activate your license. Finally, use Aid4Mail on your new computer to export your ZIP Archive contents to your new mail program.
Aid4Mail Standard:
You only need to use Aid4Mail on your old computer if you have Qualcomm Eudora mail. In this case, first install Aid4Mail on your old computer and activate your license. On your old computer, use Aid4Mail to convert your Eudora mail to the Generic Mailbox format. Next, transfer the resulting mbox folders and files to your new computer and install Aid4Mail on it; then re-activate your license. Finally, use Aid4Mail to export your mbox files to your new mail program.
For other formats, simply transfer your source mail folders to your new computer and then use Aid4Mail on your new computer to export them to your new mail program.
A. The most typical reason for such an issue is that your file is locked by another program. To avoid this, and unless you are using Office Outlook, make sure you close your mail client before clicking on the Start button in Aid4Mail. Check also that you haven't got an anti-virus or anti-spam program monitoring the mail that Aid4Mail is processing. Other possible reasons include a source file that is corrupted or does not correspond to the selected mail type, or the target location has insufficient free space or is write protected.
Aid4Mail checks both the file extension and contents to see if they conform with the selected source format. You can instruct Aid4Mail to be more "tolerant" with certain file types by running it with the /m command-line switch. This can be useful with files that start with a non-conforming format. Example:
Aid4Mail.exe /mA. Probably not. Aid4Mail may appear to hang when it is trying to connect to a remote server (IMAP account) or processing a very big email (typically a message with one or more huge attachments). Depending on your processor speed, amount of available RAM, and source or target format (for example Outlook), such a message may take as long as several hours to process.
If you encounter this situation, don't assume Aid4Mail has stopped working. Instead of terminating the process, simply give it enough time to finish its job.
A. Yes. If you have a large amount of mail or many big attachments, the target file receiving your messages can grow very big. Outlook 2003 and 2007 can store up to 20 GB of data in a single file using the Unicode PST format, and Outlook 2010 up to 50 GB. Older versions of Microsoft Outlook create ANSI PST files that are limited to 2 GB in size. Note that the PST size limit may be set smaller through registry settings (see this Microsoft Knowledge Base). Some email clients cannot read generic mailbox files that are bigger than 4 GB. An Aid4Mail ZIP archive can easily exceed a size of 20 GB; in fact the maximum file size is limited only by your system's resources.
Yes, but you will need Aid4Mail version 2.2 or more recent. Here's how:
You can set a threshold value in the "Limit file size" field on the "Target Settings" screen after select the PST file format. Setting the value to zero or leaving the field blank instructs Aid4Mail to not monitor the PST file size. Otherwise, Aid4Mail treats values equal to or below 500 as representing gigabytes (GB) and values above as megabytes (MB). When the size limit is reached, Aid4Mail stops exporting mail to the current PST file, creates a new PST file based on the name of the first one but with an index number, and then continues the mail export to the new PST file. For example, if you set the size limit to 2 GB for a file called Outlook.pst and have 5 GB of mail to export, Aid4Mail will create the following files on completion:
Note that Aid4Mail cannot determine exactly when the limit is reached because Outlook uses a data cache. In other words, Outlook will still send data to the PST file after Aid4Mail has measured the file size and stopped exporting mail to it. As a result, a PST file may slightly exceed the size limit you set. To avoid problems, choose a smaller size that ensures your PST file will never get too big.
A. Most mail programs and webmail interfaces check the folder location of a message to determine which field to use for the contact details. For mail stored in the default Sent folder, the recipient details are taken from the email To, Cc, and Bcc fields. And for mail stored in any other folder, the sender details are taken from the email From field. To correct this display issue, simply move your outgoing emails to the default Sent folder.
A. When you move a message from one folder to another in your email client, or delete a message, the process is more complicated that it would initially seem. A copy of the message is placed in the appropriate destination folder, but the original message is not removed immediately. Instead it is flagged as "unpurged", and hidden from display, until such a time that the folder that contains it is compacted or expunged.
The reason for this behavior is to optimize the move/delete process by not having to reorganize a mailbox every time a message is removed from it. As mailboxes can become very large, and messages can usually be moved around without limitation, this can provide a considerable time-saving. However it also means that when you process a mailbox with Aid4Mail, the mailbox can potentially contain unpurged messages.
As these messages are generally unwanted, they are automatically skipped by the Home and Professional versions of Aid4Mail. The eDiscovery versions offer an option to process unpurged mail, which is usually only required in a forensics context.
A. Yes you can, as long as you don't attempt to convert mail to the same target file in different instances.
A. Yes. If you are using anti-virus, anti-spam, file indexing, archiving products, or any other software/plugin that monitor email messages, turn them off temporarily when using Aid4Mail. Doing so can significantly improve processing speed. You can also speed up processing by unchecking the "Do not add duplicate messages" setting on the "Export Options" screen.
Furthermore, starting with version 1.96, Aid4Mail uses a slower method for reading generic mailbox files, including those created by Mozilla Thunderbird and Eudora. It does so to ensure it doesn't miss any emails when processing mailbox files that contain a mix of storage formats (e.g. a Mac or Unix mbox file imported in Windows Thunderbird with new messages added to it). If you are processing mailbox files that are entirely created by a single mail client, then you can increase performance without sacrificing reliability by using the /fast command-line switch. Example:
Aid4Mail.exe /fastStarting with version 1.98, under Outlook 2003 and more recent, Aid4Mail uses a special MAPI feature to import/export mail from Outlook PST and MSG files, and Exchange server mail. The advantage with this new method is that it converts Unicode messages and certain special email types more reliably than the previous method. The disadvantage is that it is usually slower than the alternative method that does not use the special MAPI feature. Use the /MapiConvOff command-line switch to turn off the special MAPI conversion feature and use the faster method instead. Example:
Aid4Mail.exe /MapiConvOffThe two command-line switches mentioned above can be used together if necessary. Example:
Aid4Mail.exe /fast /MapiConvOffNote that working on compacted mailbox files (i.e. those in which unpurged mail has been removed) can also improve conversion speed significantly. If you are responsible for migrating mail accounts in your company, you could encourage staff members to compact their mail folders before you start processing their data with Aid4Mail.
A. Usually this happens when a mailbox file only contains deleted or moved messages (unpurged mail) and has never (or not recently) been compacted. The file may also be corrupted or contain data that does not match the selected source file type.
Also, certain proprietary file formats, like DBX files from Outlook Express and PST files from Office Outlook, never have a size of zero bytes when empty and compacted.
A. Yes, there is a simple method for finding Local Folders, but unfortunately not for locally stored IMAP folders.
Right click with your mouse on a folder name in Thunderbird to open the shortcut menu. In Thunderbird version 3, choose Properties from the menu and then select and copy all the text in the Location field of the Folder Properties dialog box. In Thunderbird version 2, choose the "Copy Folder Location" command from the shortcut menu.
If you want to set Thunderbird as your source mail client, stop when you reach the Source Location screen in Aid4Mail. Then right click in the folder field and choose the "Go to Folder" command from the shortcut menu. Aid4Mail will automatically show the correct folder path in the dialog box.
If you want to set Thunderbird as your target mail client, stop when you reach the Target Settings screen in Aid4Mail. Paste the Clipboard contents in the field labeled Folder. The resulting path will look somewhat like this:
"mailbox:///C:/Users/.../Mail/Local Folders/Inbox"or
"mailbox:/C|/Documents and Settings/.../Mail/Local Folders/Inbox"Once you click on the Next button, Aid4Mail will automatically convert the path to the correct Windows format.
A. Prior to version 3, Thunderbird has a bug that makes it fail to display mail folders that have a storage path length that exceeds 128 characters. If you run into this limit, you can display more folders by moving the profile or the accounts directory closer to the root of the drive, so that less of the total path length is wasted. Another solution is to rename your source mail folders to shorter names before converting them with Aid4Mail.
A. This problem is usually caused by the Windows file indexing feature, which updates the file date stamp on reading it. Suggestion: in Windows, go to Control Panel -> Indexing Options -> Advanced -> File Types, and uncheck the extensions "eml" and "msg" from the list.
A. This problem may be caused by the Windows file indexing feature or your anti-virus program. Suggestion: in Windows, go to Control Panel -> Indexing Options -> Advanced -> File Types, and uncheck the extensions "eml" and "msg" from the list.
A. EML files produced by Aid4Mail can be imported into Outlook Express with Windows Explorer. Simply select the EML files in Windows Explorer (the Ctrl+A shortcut selects all the files in your current folder) and then drag them into the Outlook Express application window and drop them into the mail folder of your choice.
A. Microsoft Excel cannot handle cell data that exceeds 32 KB. Excel will split any email that exceeds the data size limit into smaller chunks and spread them across several columns. As a result, columns will contain incorrect data in certain rows.
Note that Excel does not recognize CSV files using the UTF-8 text encoding unless the data is proceeded with a byte order mark (BOM) encoding signature. If you open a UTF-8 encoded CSV file that lacks a BOM in Excel, all special extended characters will be rendered incorrectly.
A. This issue is due to a bug in Internet Explorer. When you click on an attachment link in an MHT file to save the document to disk, Internet Explorer displays an incorrect file name in the Save As dialog box. You should replace it with a more meaningful name and especially add the appropriate file extension. (Use the same extension as displayed in the attachment link.)
A. Aid4Mail currently does not support certain file names that contain Unicode characters. Such files cannot be processed unless they are renamed so as to remove unsupported characters.
A. Some mail clients extract attachments and store them in a separate location from messages. This is the case with Eudora and Calypso/Courier, as well as with The Bat!, PocoMail, and Barca, depending on the settings you've chosen. These mail clients usually store the path and filename of extracted attachments to maintain a link between the message and its files. Unfortunately, if you move the attachments to another location, or the original drive is assigned another letter, then the link is lost. Aid4Mail uses this link to find the attachments of the messages it processes. If it cannot find the attachment, Aid4Mail still adds the file placeholder but leaves the data empty. Note that some programs may show an incorrect attachment size for empty attachments, and even produce a "garbage" file on extraction.
Attachments that Aid4Mail doesn't find are listed in the error log file; see the "Error Log File" topic in Help for details.
There is, however, a way to instruct Aid4Mail where to look for attachment folders that have changed location through a file called Tokens.ini. See instructions under the "Fixing Attachment Folder References" topic in Help.
A. Aid4Mail checks for email duplicates by comparing the value of the Message-ID field in each processed email header. If this field is empty or missing (usually in outbound messages), Aid4Mail uses the email date and subject line for the comparison, or the whole message header if either of those values are blank; with MAPI messages (from Office Outlook or MS Exchange) however, Aid4Mail uses the email creation and submit dates, subject line, and stored message size for the comparison.
When extracting attachments and other embedded contents, Aid4Mail first checks if a file with the same name exists in the target folder. If there is, it checks whether the contents are identical. If they are, the duplicate is not saved. If the files are different, then Aid4Mail saves the file with a new name – the original filename followed by an index number in square brackets. Example:
A. There are a few reasons that this can happen. First, you may have the options to remove duplicates and/or ignore deleted mail checked which would result in fewer message in the target mailbox. Your source email client may have duplicated messages in its mailboxes causing the mismatch of the email message count. Secondly, some mailboxes get corrupted at the place which marks the start of the next message (the email delimiter) in the mailbox. If that line is corrupt, the next message in the mailbox may be considered part of the previous message causing less total messages. Thirdly, the index file (such as *.idx, *.toc) may be corrupt causing the mismatch of email messages. Lastly, Aid4Mail attempts to correct some corrupted mailboxes which often also causes an email message count difference.
A. This is not as hard to do as you might think. Your text editor might have a feature to search for words/phrases in disk files without the need to open the files into a text editor first. Our award winning NoteTab text and HTML editor has such a feature called Search Disk that will find the search criteria in the messages that contain it and open each message(s) (of choice) in its own tab. You can then simply use the Find dialog (Ctrl+F) and quickly bring the tab in focus at the word(s) searched for. NoteTab is available in free and commercial versions.
A. Windows does not allow certain characters in filenames such as: / ? | * : < >. Aid4Mail converts the "Subject:" lines that have those characters in them to legal filename characters before processing the mailbox(es) into EML, MHT, and MSG files. Character conversion can be customized through a specialized template file called NameFilter.dat. Open the file NameFilter.txt for instructions and a working example.
A. Your PocoMail email client's "Special mailboxes" are a type of virtual mailboxes. The messages are not in that folder. It just has an appearance of the messages. The "messages" act sort of like a shortcuts so that when you see the messages in the index grid and click on one, it is actually opening the message from another PocoMail mailbox. If you convert all your mailboxes, the messages will indeed be processed! If you know which mailbox(es) they are actually stored in, you can process it and the messages will be found in the target mailbox created by Aid4Mail.
A. There are several ways you can access and read mail stored in Aid4Mail ZIP archives. The best way is to use Aid4Mail filters to extract just the messages you're looking for. Simply select your ZIP archive as the source mail, set the filter options so that they find the specific messages you want to view, and choose an appropriate target format. Select a temporary target folder if you plan to remove the exported messages after viewing. An ideal target format is "MHT message files for viewing from Web browser" if you haven't got too many messages in your selection and you don't mind using Internet Explorer. Alternatively, you can export messages to the EML format; double-clicking on such a file in your file manager (e.g. Windows Explorer) will normally display the message in a new window created by a compatible email program (Outlook Express, Windows Mail, Thunderbird). Of course, you can also export all your archived mail to any of the supported mail programs.
If you are looking for an archived attachment, simply open your ZIP archive in Windows Explorer (requires Windows XP or more recent) or a ZIP utility (e.g. 7-Zip, WinZip). You will find attachments stored as regular files under the Attach folder. If you are looking for pictures or other documents that were inserted in the email message, search the Embedded folder instead.
If you do not want to use Aid4Mail to extract messages from your ZIP archive, you can also simply extract the mbox files with Windows Explore or a ZIP utility, and then view them "raw" in a text editor or an mbox reader (mail client or utility). Fookes Software offers a program called Mailbag Assistant that can read mbox files, search messages, and display them for reading.
A. Updating your Aid4Mail copy to the latest version may solve the issue.