Write only memory, and the freedom to leave
by Volker Weber
You are familiar with RAM, ROM etc. I have a concept that I call WOM - write only memory. This is data that you once stored in a format you can no longer read. Ami Pro documents, Freelance presentations, you will have plenty.
What happens if a user moves away from Lotus Notes to something else? Not a full scale migration, just a casual thing. Small consultancy breaks up, for instance. How do you get the data out of your Notes databases, if you no longer will be using Notes?
I am looking for an easy way to export your personal mail file to something else. I was recently listening to a presentation where a company integrates Notes with Sharepoint. As you drag a Notes mail to the Sharepoint site, it converts the mail on the fly to an .EML file. Are you aware of anything that would take all mails from a Notes database and convert them to .EML files? One file per message?
Contacts are relatively easy. Export as vCard. Calendars could be exported as iCal or vCal, if Notes would publish calendars. But what do you do with emails?
It's a very fundamental concept: the freedom to leave. And a simple rule: only trust your data to an application that lets you take your data away from it when you want to.
Comments
Also known as WORNE disks - write once, read never again.
But I think you are wrong about AmiPro - I had stacks of stuff on AmiPro that I converted into other formats some years ago, though I can't remember how - I think Claris Works had an excellent import filter? That said, the window of opportunity may be gone now - Claris itself is long gone of course.
I once used imapcopy for a mail migration from oX to Lotus Notes - worked well.
I guess the "easiest" way is to place the db on a Domino server and download all mails via POP3 to a mail-client which supports export to the format you want. (If you used mail encryption, then it will be even more difficult.)
POP or Imap would enable most email clients to connect, and export the mailbox to the format of choice. The bottom line is that there is no agreed upon standard for dealing with mailboxes. Lotus has .NSFs, Microsoft it's own PST proprietary format. Or maybe I'm missing something.
I second Hynek's suggestion - that's the way we moved our stuff out of Domino (albeit via IMAP).
I used Imapsize when I moved my 2 gig mailfile from Notes to my providers imap-server three years ago.
Now I use the same tool for backing up all my imap accounts regularly within a batch file. Works smoothly since then.
Joel, you are missing at least Maildir and mbox.
I have also done something close to what Hynek describes. I pointed a POP3 client (Thunderbird) at the domino server with the mail file on it, then fetched all mail. This created a relatively universal MBOX file of the mail, attachments, etc.
I should probably also say, that a Domino server may no longer be around. Anybody remember Notes R5 Private Edition? (also here) There are still people out there using that, at least I get a couple of mails from c't readers every year. These guys never had a Domino server. How would they migrate their mail?
Why would you need that old mails anymore?
Meep, wrong question. Assume you want them.
We've used Transend on a couple occasions to migrate from Outlook PST/ Exchange OST files to Notes, but it seems to be able to copy the other way just as well. It migrates just about any corporate email system format to another format. Its not free, but not expensive either.
I decline to assume wanting back years worth of deprecated information and pass the question on :)
Isn't there some code in the OpenNTF mail template that does the export to eml? It does it for the open message only, but a few lines of code should fix that.
Google recently provides migration services in and out of their solution. I haven't looked into in any serious detail, but it seems to be standards based and it may prove to be a good conduit to transfer stuff into anything ?
http://code.google.com/apis/apps/email_migration/developers_guide_protocol.html
Binary Tree are into this as well.
http://www.binarytree.com/website/msg/home.nsf/vContentW/Google--Migrate+To+Google!Opendocument
@Volker - "I should probably also say, that a Domino server may no longer be around. Anybody remember Notes R5 Private Edition?"
You can find a 90 days trial of the Domino server here.
I think there are a number of things you "could" do, but I think Volker's point is that you should have some way you can easily migrate to a common or different format. Having to depend on trial copies of software isn't a very reliable solution...
I still have (though I rarely use) both Freelance and Wordpro.
If all else fails on exporting Notes email from NSF to something else, you still have at least 2 options:
1) Export the data as DXL, which is fairly robust
2) Write an API program to do it (my choice would be C# using the COM classes, much easier than CAPI, unless you need some detailed stuff that the back-end classes don't expose)
Not the "easiest" way to go, of course, but not weeks of effort, either.
We ran into this a couple of years ago when my wife left her job at a DJIA company to go into business for herself. We thought we'd be smart and keep a copy of the .nsf file of her local replica. Six months later, when we actually wanted to look at the file, we had forgotten the file was password encrypted, and she had forgotten the password. So much for that idea...
Anything a business user could do?
Last time I did this was many years ago.
I actually used Outlook Express at the time combined with MAPI. As long as MAPI is setup correctly (I used MAPI from Office 4.3 at the time) you can pull messages from a server or local Notes mail store into Outlook Express which then allowed me to push it into the required destination application.
Volker's point is that you should have some way you can easily migrate to a common or different format
Volker is right of course, but why should a vendor help me move away from his product? Even so, a simple export this mailfile as mbox would have been nice to have and trivial for Lotus to implement.
If you have a Domino server with IMAP at your disposal, try OfflineIMAP; it has worked well for me in the past, and if you are in a hacking mood, use Perl's Mail::IMAPClient which is very reliable.
"why should a vendor help me move away from his product?"
Because it is good customer service? Because if the vendor provides good customer service I'm more likely to recommend it to others?
As Volker says I might not necessarily move away from that vendor because I want to but because I have to. May be because I'm moving to a different company or environment for reasons beyond my control. If the vendor allows me to do that and helps me with it I'm much more likely to recommend it and if possible later return to it.
Simple as that.
I did once see an email server that did it all transparently, just can't remember which one it was. You change the IP address of your old server and stick in the new one. You then tell the new server where the old one is. Users connect via pop3 or imap, the new server then uses the username and credentials passed to connect to the old server and retrieve the mail requested and migrate that mailfile into the new server. This way only active accounts get migrated and very little effort is required. I expect it only works for plain text authentication.
Do you want to access the exported mails via a mail client again? If not:
Once I was asked to render mails into PDF and export them including attachments to a folder structure on a file share. This was for archiving purposes. There are convenient tools for creating PDFs running on Notes. No Domino required.
I had written an Notes Agent for an customer, which exports the selected or all documents as a mhtml file. Such files can be open by IE and Firefox (with an plugin).
Each mail is stored in the file system as an different file in the format date-sender-subject.mhtml and the attachements of the document are stored in different files together with the mhtml file.
If you want to more informations or some screenshots send me an email.
There is (or used to be) an app called Notes to Outlook which transferred e-mails from (wait for it) Notes to Outlook. Haven't heard of it lately and it wasn't free. I think there used to be something in the Lotus Sandbox but that was probably in the other direction and it may have only been the Address Book.
Is it possible to do anything with the connector that allows people to use Outlook on a Domino Server?
For enterprises, the free "Microsoft Transporter Suite for Lotus Notes" allows to migrate mails from Domino/Notes to Exchange/Outlook. You can download it for free on http://www.microsoft.com/technet/move .
There are a number of 3rd party tools for businesses in addition: Quest, Binary Tree and Transend are the most prominent for migrations from Notes to Outlook.
Besides that, IMAP and POP3 are probably the "standard" import/export mechanism as others mentioned before if you want to move to something different than Outlook.
just install the notes client and forget about it - never start it again. Install Google Desktop Search Enterprise Edition or Windows Desktop Search, and you can always retrieve the information stored in the mails written 15 years ago. Because, what I think (looking at my own collection of mailboxes from the past 15 years) - it is not about exporting and reimporting, the real requirement is about the ability to retrieve the information. And this is done best with a Search engine. And speaking about "business" solution, you could buy a google search appliance or mini google, and have everything on the server. (this is of cause if you are allergic to lotus, for unknown reasons)
