Google Hacks 2Nd Edition [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Hack 74. Import Mail into Gmail

Moving to Gmail doesn't have
to mean starting from scratch. Forward mail in bulk from your
computer or other web mail service to your Gmail account .

The most enticing feature of

Gmail is probably its ability to perform
Google-style searches on your own inbox. The one gigabyte of free
space is intriguing, but it's not much when you
consider that you have far more than that available to you on even
your most outdated PC. And I'd warrant that not even
its snazzy JavaScripted user interface is enough to tear you away
from your existing web mail service, uprooting yourself and starting
over.

Gmail doesn't currently provide any way to import
your existing email archive (web mail service or desktop mailbox).
While you already might have considered forwarding all that mail to
your Gmail account, just how to do soeven just the few hundred
"important" messagesis quite
a trick.

Not so, thanks to hacks like the Google Mail Loader for forwarding
desktop mail and web mail intermediaries YPOPs! for Yahoo! Mail and
MSN email and GetMail for Hotmail.

6.7.1. Forward Desktop Mail

The Google Mail
Loader (http://www.marklyon.org/gmail; GNU Public
License) is a point-and-click application that reads your existing
mail files on your computer and forwards the messages on to
Gmailone every two seconds, so as not to overload or otherwise
annoy the Gmail servers. It does so without deleting mail from your
local computer; what's sent to Gmail is a copy of
each and every message. You can even set it to drop uploaded messages
into your Gmail Inbox or Sent Mail folder.

GML is cross-platform and understands multiple mailbox formats:

Mbox (used by
Netscape, Mozilla, Thunderbird, and many other email applications)

MailDir
(Qmail and others)

MMDF (Mutt)

MH (NMH)

Babyl (Emacs
RMAIL).

Microsoft Outlook, via a utility such
as PST Reader (http://www.mailnavigator.com/reading_ms_outlook_pst_filesl),
which converts Outlook's PST files to Mbox format

6.7.1.1 Installing the hack

Download the Windows or Linux/Mac OS X, source-only version
(http://www.marklyon.org/gmail/download).
The Windows version is definitely the simplest version to set up and
use, requiring no prerequisites and other bits and pieces.

The source version assumes you have the Python scripting language and
the

Python Mega Widgets
(http://pmw.sourceforge.net)
toolkit installed.

The ins and outs of installing GML and all the prerequisites from source is beyond the scope of this book. If you need help, consult the documentation for Python (http://www.python.org) and Python Mega Widgets (http://pmw.sourceforge.net), or ask your local technical guru or system administrator. If, on the other hand, you have Python on your system and don't much care whether the Google Mail Loader is a desktop or command-line application, skip ahead to the "Hacking the hack" section.

6.7.1.2 Running the hack

Since Google Mail Loader works directly with your email
application's mailboxes, you'll
need to figure out where they live before you can go much further.
Consult your email app's preferences or
documentation or just dig aroundboth on your hard drive and by
googling for "outlook express" mailbox files
location, replacing "outlook express"
with the name of your email program.

You'll also need to make sure that your mailbox
files are in a format that Google Mail Loader can read, as listed in
the beginning of this hack. If there's any
conversion to do, do so now. For instance, use

PST Reader (http://www.mailnavigator.com/reading_ms_outlook_pst_filesl)
to turn Outlook and Outlook Express PST files into DBX format.

With mailbox files in hand, launch Google Mail Loader by
double-clicking gmlw.exe on Windows or typing
python gmlw.py on the Unix or Mac OS X command
line. Figure 6-14 shows Google Mail Loader running
under Linux.

Figure 6-14. Google Mail Loader

Work your way down the settings on the left half of the GML window:

The default SMTP server (that's the sendmail server,
the one used to send your messages to Gmail) of Figure 6-15). There are two versions of Mbox format: one
stricter about the format of files and therefore more accurate, while
the other is more lenient and works better on some Mbox files.




Figure 6-15. Select your mailbox file type





For some of the history, read Jamie Zawinski's
"mail summary files" at http://www.jwz.org/doc/mailsuml.

If you don't know what format your mail application
uses, try googling for mail format pine, replacing
pine with your mail app's name.
(Pine uses Mbox, by the by.)

GML is able to upload both your incoming and outgoing mail. Choose
Mail I Received from the Message Type pull-down menu, and messages
will be dropped into your Gmail Inbox and appear to be from the
original sender, just as they did in your email
application's mailbox. If you choose Mail I Sent,
the messages will be relabeled as coming from your Gmail address and
appear in your Gmail Sent Mail folder.

Gmail automatically labels incoming messages as Inbox. There's no way, unfortunately, for an external application to change this behavior, so messages imported as Mail I Sent will be labeled as both Sent Mail and Inbox and appear in both places. Mind you, there is only actual one copy of the message stored and sent mail is relabeled so as to appear to be from your Gmail address, not your old email address. If you Archive the copy you see in your Gmail Inbox, it will then appear only in Sent Mail (and Archive, of course).

Finally, type in your full Gmail address (e.g.,
http://www.marklyon.org/gmail/cleanmbox.py)
that'll clean up most of these problems.

Importing mail from Outlook is a bit spotty. I recommend one of two
things: import your Outlook mail into Outlook Express and then into
the open source

Thunderbird mail
application (http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/),
or use PST Reader or the like to convert your Outlook mail to Mbox.





6.7.1.3 Hacking the hack




If you're a command-line jockey or
don't particularly relish installing the various
prerequisites (Tk, Python Mega Widgets) necessary to get the
graphical version of Google Mail Loader running,
there's also a text-only version available at
http://www.marklyon.org/gmail/old/default.

The only requirement for the command-line GML is Python (http://www.python.org).

Here's a sample session with the older GML on the
Mac OS X command line:

$ python gml.py 
Mbox & Maildir to Google Mail Loader (GML) by Mark Lyon <mark@marklyon.org>
Usage: gml.exe [mbox or maildir] [mbox file or maildir path] [gmail address] [Optional 
SMTP Server]
Exmpl: gml.exe mbox "c:\mail\Inbox" marklyon@gmail.com
Exmpl: gml.exe maildir "c:\mail\Inbox" marklyon@gmail.com gsmtp171.google.com
$ python gml.py mbox ~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/1999.mbox/mbox 'hank+gml@gmail.com'
Mbox & Maildir to Google Mail Loader (GML) by Mark Lyon <mark@marklyon.org>
1 Forwarded a message from  : someone@example.com
Done. Stats: 1 success 0 error 0 skipped.




6.7.2. Migrate from an Existing Web Mail Service




Despite attempts by your existing web mail service to entice you to
stay, Gmail beckons with its one gigabyte of storage, powerful
search, rich web interface, and chance of grabbing a better email
address than raelity973@. That said,
you're loathe to leave behind the last year or
three's email.

Well, you can indeed take it with you, thanks to some nice donateware
Web-to-POP mail utilities. These intermediaries operate in one of two
ways:

The utility sits between your desktop email application and web mail
service, allowing you to download all of your mail to your computer,
after which you can use the Google Mail Loader to feed it all to
Gmail.

The utility combines these two steps into one, grabbing all of your
web mail and forwarding it on in bulk to your Gmail account.




While there are no doubt any number of these utilities, two we
stumbled across were GetMail and YPOPs!

Of course, you may just opt to pay for POP mail access to your web mail service, download all your mail like you would any other, and use the Google Mail Loader from there. If, however, you've gone this long without paying for POP service, chances are you're not going to do so now just to move out of the service.




6.7.2.1 Hop from Hotmail/MSN




GetMail (http://www.e-eeasy.com/GetMail.aspx;
donate-ware) is a two-in-one for

Hotmail and MSN that runs under
Windows.

Move any messages that you want to send across to your Gmail account
to your Hotmail Inbox (if you've previously filed
them elsewhere) and mark them as unread.

Launch GetMail (shown in Figure 6-16), provide it
with your Hotmail/MSN account name and password, and type your full
Gmail address into the Forward To box. Check whatever options you
prefer; I'd uncheck the Delete checkbox. Now click
Check for New Mail to set GetMail in motion and go get a cup of
coffee while it moves all those messages across for you. You can even
leave it running, transferring your Hotmail messages to Gmail on an
ongoing basis.




Figure 6-16. GetMail can download Hotmail/MSN messages and forward them on to Gmail







6.7.2.2 Yank your Yahoo! Mail




YPOPs! (http://yahoopops.sourceforge.net/;
donateware) is a POP mail proxy, sitting between your preferred email
application and Yahoo! Mail. It is available for Windows, Mac OS X,
Linux, and Solaris. The Windows version self-installs while the
others require that you compile from source code and so are a little
more difficult for the uninitiated to get up and running.

Move any messages you want to download and carry across to Gmail into
your Yahoo! Mail Inbox and mark them as unread.

On Windows, run YPOPs! after installation. A little icon appears in
your Windows taskbar; double-click it to get to the settings, shown
in Figure 6-17.




Figure 6-17. YPOPs! proxies POP mail requests




While you can go ahead and make a few changes in the settings, YPOPs!
runs right out of the box without any further configuration.

Now, simply set up a POP mail account like any other, only pointing
to YPOPs! running locally as your mail serverboth incoming and
outgoing. The YPOPs! site has details on configuring most email
clients at http://yahoopops.sourceforge.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=listarticles&secid=1.

Once you have downloaded all of your web mail to your computer, use
the Google Email Loader to send all the contents of your local inbox
to Gmail.




6.7.3. See Also




GmailerXP (http://gmailerxp.sourceforge.net; donateware)
is the be-all and end-all of Gmail/Windows integration, providing a
full-featured frontend to your Gmail email, importing and uploading
legacy
messages to Gmail, new mail notification, and so on.

Mark Lyon, Justin Blanton, and Rael Dornfest