Archives, converts, and exports
all your important email
The FAQ is divided into five sections:
A. You can buy Aid4Mail through our online order page. We have no local dealers. Our software is sold world-wide by Plimus Corporation, a leading U.S. order-taking company. Plimus is under contract with Fookes Software to process orders and collect payments. They accept orders online using a credit card, PayPal, bank/wire transfer, check/money order, purchase order, invoice, and credit card by fax.
A. Purchase Orders are a means of paying for products on credit (i.e. first receiving the goods and paying later). This method is usually used by larger corporations and is available for orders exceeding $80.00 USD. The way it works is as follows:
A. Select "Wire" as payment method in the order form. After clicking the "Next" button, you will be taken to a page with detailed instructions, including your order reference number and the bank details for your payment.
A. Please complete the order by fax or phone and Plimus will manually process your order, or send an email to sales@plimus.com with a brief description of the situation, or you can phone 1-866-4PLIMUS (toll free in the US and Canada) or +1-858-350-7473 (international).
A. All information regarding your order, including activation code(s), are sent to you via email -- usually within minutes of your payment being accepted. However, sometimes these emails may be caught by your "Spam Protection" tool, or may be automatically sent to your "Junk" folder. Please be sure to check those locations if you don't receive the emails shortly.
In some cases, your email service may be experiencing a slowdown in email delivery -- delays of several hours are possible in these situations. In other cases, your ISP may be blocking the emails before they even reach your account. When this happens, the only solution is for you to provide an alternative address to which we can send the registration emails.
At least two emails are sent to you: a Receipt and a Confirmation per product purchased. If you do not receive any of these emails please visit the Plimus Customer Support page for help. If doing so still doesn't help to resolve the issue, then please contact us and include as many details about your order as possible so that we can better assist you.
A. When the message "Credit card was declined" appears while processing an order it means that your credit card bank has declined the transaction, usually a quick call to your credit card bank's customer service will clarify most of the issues. If problems persist, you can use the Fax or Mail payment options to have your order processed.
A. Please visit our Refund Policy page for details.
A. Minor updates and maintenance releases are free for users of the corresponding major version. In other words, if you purchased Aid4Mail v1.0, all updates up to v1.999 inclusive are available for free. Major upgrades (version 2.x, 3.x, etc.) are available to registered users of previous versions at a 50% discount.
A. The most typical reason is one or more firewall programs (Norton, Zone Alarm, Windows XP firewall) are blocking Aid4Mail's access to the Internet. Make sure that all your firewalls allow Aid4Mail to reach the activation server. If you're accessing the Internet through a Proxy server and you've configured the Aid4Mail proxy settings, make sure these are valid. If you are not using Internet Explorer as your browser, it may be configured with invalid proxy settings; unchecking the "Use IE proxy configuration" option in the Proxy Settings screen could help resolve the connection issue.
A. If you can't remember your password, click on the "Forgot Password?" button in the Activation dialog box, which appears on the screen after you enter your activation code. Your password will then be sent to the email address you entered when you first activated your license. If the email doesn't reach you within minutes, check your junk mailbox in case it was misidentified as spam. Note that this feature will only work if you supplied your email address when you first activated your license.
A. Searching for customer's lost activation codes and passwords can be a time consuming process. To partially cover our search costs, we charge a small $5.00 US fee for this service. Please purchase a "Search & Resend Registration Details" service option to have us recover your lost details.
A. This usually happens because the character case of the entered password does not match the case of the original password. Check that your Caps Lock key isn't engaged while you are entering your password. Check also that you are typing the characters in the same case as the original password. Another password-related problem is when you try to re-activate your license with a new password that you have already used before. Make sure that the password you type in the "New Password" field has never been used before to activate your code.
A. The following is the information that you need to setup your firewall:
A. No. License activation is not tied to your hardware. If you need to reinstall your software after reformatting your hard disk or moving to a new computer, you just need to re-activate your software. Re-activation is a quick and simple method to get your software fully operational again. Note, however, that the copy on your previous computer will revert to trial mode if you re-activate your code on another computer.
A. No. Activations and re-activations will be available to all versions of our products.
A. If softWORKZ or Fookes Software suspends service, customers will be able to download a patch that bypasses the activation system or a special version of Aid4Mail that does not use any activation system.
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 MS 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 /m
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 2003/2007 can store up to 20 GB of data in a single file using the Unicode PST format. Older versions of MS Outlook create ANSI PST files that are limited to 2 GB in size (note that Aid4Mail cannot detect when this size limit is reached). Many email clients cannot read generic mailbox files that are bigger than 4 GB. A ZIP archive can reach a size of 4 GB, which in most cases it should be enough to store the contents of a 20 GB Unicode PST file (Outlook 2003 and 2007).
A. Yes. If you are using anti-virus, anti-spam, 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; use the /d command-line switch if you are running Aid4Mail Console.
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 /fast
Starting 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 /MapiConvOff
The two command-line switches mentioned above can be used together if necessary. Example:
Aid4Mail.exe /fast /MapiConvOff
Note 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. This problem is caused by Windows. When a folder receives many files, Windows takes longer and longer to save each additional file to it. Since Aid4Mail waits on Windows to complete the save operation, it takes longer and longer to process messages and may even appear to freeze after a while. Solution: use filters to reduce the number of emails getting saved in a disk folder.
A. If you have a copy of Office Outlook, you can add your IMAP account to it through the Tools/E-mail Accounts menu command. Once you have done so, Outlook will create a PST file that Aid4Mail can use to access your IMAP messages. Select this PST file as your source mail in Aid4Mail and then choose the target format you want to save the messages to. If Office Outlook can connect to your IMAP server, then Aid4Mail will start downloading the messages through it and process them according to your settings. Note that this method requires Aid4Mail Professional, Forensic, or Enterprise.
If you don't have a copy of Office Outlook, then your only option is to download your messages with your mail client to a local mail folder, and then process the local folder with Aid4Mail. However, you always have the option to use a free 60-day trial version if you don't own Outlook.
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. 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. Aid4Mail currently does not support certain filenames that contain Unicode characters. Such files cannot be processed unless they are renamed so as to remove unsupported characters.
A. As indicated in many parts of our Web site (e.g.: Versions, Key Features, Store) and in our documentation, Aid4Mail Standard has a smaller feature set than Aid4Mail Professional. Hence the lower price. If you need to upgrade your license to Aid4Mail Professional, simply read through the email that was sent to you with your activation code. That email contains instructions and a link you can use to purchase the upgrade. As with most software companies, upgrades include a small additional fee that covers third-party costs and manual processing.
A. Make sure MS Outlook is correctly installed on your system. Aid4Mail cannot process MAPI accounts, PST, and MSG files if Extended MAPI is not running. Extended MAPI is usually only available if MS Outlook is installed.
If you don't own an Office Outlook license yet, you can always download and install a free 60-day trial version from Microsoft's web site.
A. The MAPI subsystem installed in the Internet Mail Only mode (only exists in Outlook 98/2000) is a stub that provides minimal MAPI support for the basic functionality of Office Outlook, and may not work properly with Aid4Mail. When using MS Outlook 98 and 2000, it must be installed in Corporate/WorkGroup mode to ensure full compatibility with Aid4Mail. Instructions for changing Outlook 2000 mode are available on Microsoft's web site.
How to tell which setup option you have: In Outlook on the Help menu, click About Microsoft Outlook. Next, look at the second line of text in the About Microsoft Outlook dialog box. If it shows "Corporate or Workgroup", then you have a fully working version of Outlook with Extended MAPI installed.
A. Sometimes, when you try to process a second Outlook data store (PST file or MAPI profile), Aid4Mail seems to ignore the new settings and simply reprocesses the first email store. When this happens, you might notice the presence of a temporary profile with a name like pstloadtmp000. This profile is not created by Aid4Mail, but by some other tool that is hooked onto MS Outlook or Exchange. The cure to this issue is to delete the temporary profile and/or disable any third-party tools that could be interfering with Aid4Mail (synchronization software, backup, anti-virus, etc.)
You can delete the temporary profiles by opening the Windows Control Panel, followed by double-clicking on the Mail icon, then clicking on the Show Profiles button in the Mail Setup dialog box.
If the above doesn't apply, see if rebooting your computer fixes the issue.
A. If your version of MS Outlook is older than Outlook 2003, this issue may occur because your copy of Outlook is not the default email client. In that case, see if temporarily setting it as the default client fixes the issue and restart Aid4Mail. To change the default email client, open the Internet Properties dialog box. (This can be done either by right-clicking on the Internet Explorer program shortcut and selecting "Properties", or by opening Internet Explorer and selecting "Internet Options" from the "Tools" menu.) Then select the Programs tab, and select the "Microsoft Office Outlook" value in the field labeled E-mail.
The issue can also occur if you have Outlook 98/2000 installed in Internet Mail Only mode, or when there is a temporary MAPI profile with a name like pstloadtmp000. See the FAQ items above for details.
If the above doesn't apply, see if rebooting your computer fixes the issue.
A. If your version of MS Outlook is older than Outlook 2003, this issue may occur because your copy of Outlook is not the default email client. In that case, see if temporarily setting it as the default client fixes the issue and restart Aid4Mail. To change the default email client, open the Internet Properties dialog box. (This can be done either by right-clicking on the Internet Explorer program shortcut and selecting "Properties", or by opening Internet Explorer and selecting "Internet Options" from the "Tools" menu.) Then select the Programs tab, and select the "Microsoft Office Outlook" value in the field labeled E-mail.
The issue can also occur if you have Outlook 98/2000 installed in Internet Mail Only mode, or when there is a temporary MAPI profile with a name like pstloadtmp000. See the FAQ items above for details.
If the above doesn't apply, see if rebooting your computer fixes the issue.
A. Your source mail folders may contain characters or a format that MAPI cannot use when creating target folder names. However, we have found that with Outlook 2007, the problem sometimes disappears simply by rebooting the computer. If this does not help, try renaming the source mail folder that is causing the problem.
A. You can open PST files through the File/Open/Outlook Data File menu command in Office Outlook. Older versions of Outlook may use slightly different names for the menu command. You should avoid using the Outlook import command on your PST files as this sometimes produces unexpected results. Note that Unicode PST files created with Outlook 2003 or newer cannot be opened with an older version of Outlook.
A. Yes. If you are using anti-virus, anti-spam, 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; use the /d command-line switch if you are running Aid4Mail Console.
Furthermore, starting 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 /MapiConvOff
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 /fast
The two command-line switches mentioned above can be used together if necessary. Example:
Aid4Mail.exe /MapiConvOff /fast
A. You need to configure Outlook to download the complete email, not just the header. To make the change, you must open the Send/Receive Settings dialog box in Outlook, select your IMAP account, and then select "Download complete item including attachments" in the Folder Options section. Once you've done that, Aid4Mail should be fetching the whole email.
To reach the Send/Receive Settings dialog box, you must first open the Send/Receive Groups dialog box using the Ctrl+Alt+S keyboard shortcut, or the following menu command: Tools -> Send/Receive -> Send/Receive Settings -> Define Send/Receive Groups..., then click on the Edit button.
A. Aid4Mail will run on Intel-based Macs that are running Windows or Wine, and on PowerPC Macs using Virtual PC. However, we do recommend that you try Aid4Mail first before purchasing a license to ensure that it is compatible with your computer system and that it satisfies your requirements.
A. Yes. Aid4Mail is capable of processing email files stored by all versions of Mac OS X Mail. Since Aid4Mail is a Windows application, it will only run on Intel-based Macs that are running Windows or Wine, and on PowerPC Macs using Virtual PC. We recommend that you run Aid4Mail on a Windows system as it will process mail much faster that way.
If you want to migrate your Mac Mail to a Windows email program, first transfer your files from Mac to Windows. You can also copy your Mac mail folders and files to a CD, DVD, or USB drive, which Aid4Mail can then access from your Windows computer. Aid4Mail can read the MBOX files created by Mac OS X Mail 1 (that comes with Mac OS X 10.0 to 10.3) – if that is the format you have, use the "Generic mailboxes" mail source option under the "Generic Mailbox Format" section in Aid4Mail. Later versions of Mac OS X Mail (starting with version 2) store their messages in EMLX format. To migrate those messages, use the "EML message files" mail source option under the "Outlook Express" section in Aid4Mail.
To migrate your Windows email messages to Mac OS X Mail, run Aid4Mail on your Windows computer and convert your mail to the "Generic mailboxes" format, which is listed under the "Generic formats" section on the Target Format screen in Aid4Mail. We recommend that you set the Filename field on the Target Settings screen to "*.MBOX" (without the quotes), and set the "Target Line Format" option to "Macintosh (CR)". You will then have to transfer the mbox files created by Aid4Mail to your Mac system, and use the Mac OS X Mail import command to copy your emails into it.
A. Aid4Mail does not process Microsoft Entourage's native mail database stores, but it does handle the MBOX file format that Entourage supports.
If you want to migrate your Entourage mail to a Windows email program, first convert your Entourage mail folders to MBOX files. The simplest way to do this is to drag each folder of messages to the Mac desktop. Entourage will automatically create an MBOX file for each folder you drag-and drop to the desktop. Next, you will have to transfer your MBOX files from Mac to Windows. You can also copy your MBOX files to a CD, DVD, or USB drive, which Aid4Mail can then access from your Windows computer. Use the "Generic mailboxes" mail source option under the "Generic Mailbox Format" section in Aid4Mail to select your MBOX files and then choose the appropriate target email format when you reach the Target Format screen.
To migrate your Windows email messages to Microsoft Entourage, run Aid4Mail on your Windows computer and convert your mail to the "Generic mailboxes" format, which is listed under the "Generic formats" section on the Target Format screen in Aid4Mail. We recommend that you set the Filename field on the Target Settings screen to "*.MBOX" (without the quotes), and set the "Target Line Format" option to "Macintosh (CR)". You will then have to transfer the mbox files created by Aid4Mail to your Mac system. Then either use the Entourage import command to copy your emails into it (File / Import / Contacts or Messages from a text file / Import messages from an MBOX-format text file), or drag-and-drop the MBOX files to the Entourage folder window.
A. Aid4Mail can process and export mail from Mac Eudora mailbox files, but it cannot create Eudora mailbox files. Since Aid4Mail is a Windows application, it will only run on Intel-based Macs that are running Windows or Wine, and on PowerPC Macs using Virtual PC. We recommend that you run Aid4Mail on a Windows system as it will process mail much faster that way.
To migrate your Mac Eudora messages to a Windows email program, first transfer your files from Mac to Windows. You can also copy your Mac Eudora mailbox files to a CD, DVD, or USB drive, which Aid4Mail can then access from your Windows computer. Use the "Mac Eudora" mail source option under the "Eudora" section in Aid4Mail to select your mailbox files and then choose the appropriate target email format when you reach the Target Format screen.
Aid4Mail expects to find the mailbox files under the "Mail Folder" folder, attachments in the "Attachments Folder" folder, and embedded contents in the "Parts Folder" folder. All three folders share the same parent folder. If your attachment and embedded contents files are in a different location, see the instructions under the "Fixing Attachment Folder References" topic in the Aid4Mail Help file.
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Fookes Software Ltd - quality products from Charmey, Switzerland
Last updated on April 30, 2008