In article ,
Mike Henry wrote:

"DoN. Nichols" wrote in message

[ ... ]

I'm pretty sure the last virus I got was on a floppy disk from someone at
work and that was nearly 10 years ago. So far, no problems at all from
Outlook or Outlook Express, especially after implementing better security
procedures (internal to O & OE as well as external).

I presume that this includes installing the security patch from
Microsoft for OE?

That's just me,
though, and I don't have a problem with anyone else switching. I have far
too much archived with both to consider switching, especially as none of the
other email or newsreader programs seems to have any sort of decent transfer
facility. Been a while since I looked at the current market offerings,
though - do you know of any?

The problem is not the other programs, so much as the fact that
OE keeps the e-mail in a proprietary (and undocumented) format, and
that you allowed it to get hold of your e-mail before you considered
other programs.

All of the unix-based e-mail programs which I know keep e-mail
in plain-text files -- easy to import from or export to other programs,
including text editors, programs like "grep" to search for strings in a
file, and just about anything else you might want/need.

When a unix system stores mail, it goes into a "mailbox" format
file, which separates messages with a completely blank line (not even
any spaces), followed by a line starting with "From " (no ':' -- the
"From: " occurs later in the headers). And the end of the headers is
separated from the body by another entirely blank line. (The blank line
is represented in unix regular expressions as "^$", which means that
from the start of the line '^' to the end '$', there is nothing between
them.

I believe that Forte's Agent uses plain-text files, but I can't
run that program either, so someone else will have to verify this, or
deny it.

I don't have OE to allow me to look through the file format, so
I don't know how difficult it might be to write a program to strip it
out. But you might look for import tools for other programs (like
Forte's Agent), or conversion programs among the freeware.

If all else fails, look through the libraries available for
perl. You would have to install the language (free), and download and
install the necessary libraries (also all free) to support the ones in
question, but I'll bet that *someone* has written a perl program to
strip e-mail out of the file that OE keeps it in. (Perl is another
program which started in unix, but which has been ported to at least
Windows and Macs by those who know of its power.)

Good Luck,
DoN.
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