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Examining the Address Book Data: The First Changes
Continued from Really Using Your Computer: Converting an Email Addressbook for Webmail Use
My first step was to check Eudora and look for an Export function. But, Larrry was right – Eudora doesn’t export its data for importing into other programs.
On the other hand, unlike many others (especially Outlook and Outlook Express), Eudora stores all its data in standard text files. All I had to do was to find the data file. I found it — NNdbase.txt — in Eudora’s user data folder (by default, this is C:\Documents and Settings\[Your User ID]\Application Data\Qualcomm\Eudora).
Inside, the file looks like the following image. In this dummy file, I have three entries Notice that each entry in the address book requires two lines in the file. This would definitely create a problem in trying to import the data into any other email program! By the way, the line numbers are not in the file — they are part of the Notepad++ editor.
(click on the image for a larger version)
The first thing I needed to do was to change those two lines per entry into only one line per entry. In last week's newsletter, I had an article Removing Carraige Returns (Line Breaks, Form Feeds) from Documents. That was exactly what I needed to do.
I made a copy of Eudora's NNdbase.txt file and loaded it into Notepad++. Then, as I discussed last week, I selected the carraige return (actually, it was stored as both a carraige return and a line feed) through the word "Note" so that I only eliminated the carraige returns within the records but not the ones at the end of the records, like this:
(click on the image for a larger version)
Using the Replace function in Notepad++, which is very similar to that in any word processor (except that it can handle carraige returns and other non-printing characters), I copied the selection from above — and pasted it into the Find field. I didn't put anything into the Replace With field, although I could have put the word "note" in there. Then, I clicked Replace all.
(click on the image for a larger version)
Notice how the resulting file has only 3 records (the lines are wrapped in the window, but Notepad++'s line numbers show you that there are now 3 records.
(click on the image for a larger version)
At this point, I've taken the first step in translating this data into the format needed for the webmail system.
Continued in Preparing the Data for Restructuring
Link to this page — just add this code to your web page!
<a href="http://www.terryscomputertips.com/computers/examining-the-address-book-data-the-first-changes.php">Examining the Address Book Data: The First Changes</a>
Copyright © 2006-2007 Terry A. Stockdale. All rights reserved.
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