Eudora Reindexing

[dthomsen8]

All my recent email messages in Eudora 6.2.5.6 are missing. I wrote to the Eudora support, and they replied with the instructions below. Good instructions, but I don't find the "Find Messages" icon under the Tools/Options menu, so I don't see how to reindex that way. I wrote back to them, but I suspect some forum member knows how to do the reindexing. I can see the files with Windows Explorer, so I know the messages are still there.

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Their help follows:

Issue:

How do I re-index my mailboxes for the Fast Search? or

The Fast Search isn't finding all my messages.

Solution:

Something in the indexing of the mailboxes may have gotten interrupted or out of sync.

To correct this you will need to re-index your mailboxes.

- Open Eudora

- Go into Tools - Options - Find Messages

- Select the option to Re-index Email

- Select ok

This will go through and re-index all of your messages and mailboxes. The time for the re-indexing process will vary depending on the number of mailboxes and messages that you have in Eudora.

I apologize, if I didn't answer your questions!

[dthomsen8]

Now I have paid for and downloaded Eudora 7.1, and that does have reindexing as an option. I did the reindexing, but a year's worth of inbox is still missing. I have written again to the Eudora support with the new registration number, but no reply so far.

[Steve Rindsberg]

Eudora's mailboxes are just text files. If you have an editor that'll deal with large files (assuming yours are), copy the mailbox file to another location and try opening it (might need to rename it with a .TXT extension to make the editor happy).

You can at least search the file to determine whether the emails you're looking for are really there; if not, reindexing won't help.

[dthomsen8]

Eudora's mailboxes are just text files. If you have an editor that'll deal with large files (assuming yours are), copy the mailbox file to another location and try opening it (might need to rename it with a .TXT extension to make the editor happy).

You can at least search the file to determine whether the emails you're looking for are really there; if not, reindexing won't help.

Yes, I copied all the files starting with in.* to a separate folder, and took a look with metapad. Those missing emails are right there, In.mbx.001 has them. They are not in the Inbox displayed by Eudora, though, even after reindexing. The gap in dates is clearly in In.mbx. What do I do now?

Directory of H:\Program Files\Qualcomm\Eudora\eudata

01/26/2007 07:36 PM 5,144,024 In.mbx <------- has gap in email
01/25/2007 04:33 PM 28,772,434 In.mbx.001 <--- has missing email in late 2006 and January 2007
12/18/2006 12:15 PM 30,757,948 In.mbx.002 <--- older email, through late 2006
01/26/2007 07:36 PM 199,792 In.toc
01/25/2007 04:56 PM 196,740 In.toc.001
12/18/2006 12:15 PM 797,330 In.toc.002

[Kelvyn]

The quickest way to force a re-index with Eudora is to rename the in.toc files, which then causes the idex to be recreated on starting up Eudora. A loss of messages is quite likely to be caused by a corruption in the .mbx - I used to see this periodically with Eudora (one of the reasons I junked it). I used to open the in.mbx file in NoteTab and remove the mails received from when it last worked. Then save & re-index. Worked for me every time, but what a hastle!

[dthomsen8]

... I used to open the in.mbx file in NoteTab and remove the mails received from when it last worked. Then save & re-index. Worked for me every time, but what a hastle!

Working with a 32Mb file is no fun. MetaPad gives me a message about maybe I am editing a binary file, and it removes some line-end characters if I go ahead. Is NoteTab different in that regard?

[Kelvyn]

Is NoteTab different in that regard?
NoteTab Pro did notify of binary errors but still edited the file OK. As long as you have a backup its worth trying to edit the file. The error (assuming there is one) will be close to the end of the entries.

[dthomsen8]

NoteTab Pro did notify of binary errors but still edited the file OK. As long as you have a backup its worth trying to edit the file. The error (assuming there is one) will be close to the end of the entries.

I have a backup on a flash drive. Nero Express never succeeded in making a backup that would verify, not even after three tries. I tried the WinXP copy with two Windows Explorer windows, no success there, it copied into a folder on the C: drive, and left me with a message about files waiting to be transferred to the CD. Very annoying, no indication why. Two tries didn't do it.

Reindexing by eraseing the in.toc file didn't work out very well. Every Inbox file is now marked with the blue dot saying it is not read, and the messages are still missing that were missing before. Fortunately, I have the backup.

I don't know just how I would recognize the error, though.

[Kelvyn]

Re-indexing should recover all the files and mark them as not read, But if the emails you want are still missing then that is not the solution. An alternative approach is to use the ABC Eudora Converter (http://www.shoecake.com/software.php?id=74777&cat=69&name=ABCAmberEudoraConverter) to convert the mail files into a format that you can read and keep.

[dthomsen8]

Re-indexing should recover all the files and mark them as not read, But if the emails you want are still missing then that is not the solution...

It turns out the solution is to use the duplicate inbox files created automatically by Eudora 6x and later. I added them to the message box list, and all the older emails I wanted were there for transfer to other folders.

[gary]

I tried the WinXP copy with two Windows Explorer windows, no success there, it copied into a folder on the C: drive, and left me with a message about files waiting to be transferred to the CD. Very annoying, no indication why. Two tries didn't do it. You have to "open" the CD drive folder and from the File menu select the option to *actually* write the files to CD.

Installation of Nero (InCD?) may interfere with this native XP functionality.