Well, Eudora OSE was a version of Thunderbird. I would suggest backing up all Eudora files first to ensure the install of Thunderbird doesn't compromise anything.

Thank you. I'm having to reinstall Eudora OSE because it developed an Alert message that wouldn't disappear and was blocking the program. Can you tell me how to back up the Eudora files once I've reinstalled it? I'm new to the program.

I would simply copy all the directories that it uses for messages to a separate directory to ensure they weren't lost or modified such that you couldn't start over.

Just for laughs (my spouse still uses Eudora), I tested OSE. It uses the same profile structure as THunderbird and installing TB after OSE worked immediately. At most you may have to define the profile via profile manager.

I'm not a 'techie' so I don't understand how to 'define the profile via profile manager' - and a big question for me is that my friend has thousands of emails that I would need to import into Thunderbird and I have no idea how to do that. I tried to see where they are stored in Eudora OSE but couldn't find them. (You might guess I'm feeling out of my depth with this!)

First, the emails are already Thunderbird-compliant, as Eudora OSE was a spinoff of Thunderbird. The actual profile is probably at c:\users\(your friend's ID)\appdata\roaming\Eudora or c:\users\(your friend's ID)\appdata\roaming\Thunderbird Second, go ahead and install Thunderbird after copying the Eudora folders. Third, start Thunderbird. If it prompts for an email id, that's normal, and just means it doesn't know which profile to use. Click 'home' tab in upper left, then right-click and select 'menu bar'. Then click help>moretroubleshooting information, then scroll down to 'Profiles' and click 'about:profiles'. At this point, the Eudora profile 'might' be viewable. If so, click it and continue. If not, click the 'create profile' button and 1: enter a name for the profile and then, 2: click the browse button to locate and select the Eudora profile. And you're done. Let me know.

Thanks so much David. I've got to 'about profiles' and I've attached a photo of what it's showing. The top two - root directory and local directory - with the ocmstzho.default - seem to have all the Eudora emails in (there's an SQLITE file of 571,887KB. I wasn't sure exactly what to click on.

I'm also attaching a photo of the two folders in the Profiles folder in the Roaming/Thunderbird files copied for safety as you suggested.

I would go with the one showing OCM in its name. The other profile ls probably the 'dummy' profile that Thundbird creates automatically when installed. Let me know how it goes.

PS Should I try to set up a Thunderbird account before I do anything else? My friend uses quite an obscure mail server - I might need to see if it works (I guess it should - it's says incoming server port for IMAP is 993, for POP3 is 995. Outgoing is 465. This is for TLS/SSL settings.

the server hostname is vipme.dns-systems.net

"I would go with the one showing OCM in its name."

I'm not sure what exactly to click on. Do I click on 'open folder' for both the Root Directory and the Local Directory?

Root and local both have OCM... (Just making sure I don't click the wrong thing!)

Just for clarity, Eudora OSE is Thunderbird V3 with the Penelope add-on installed to provide a Eudora like overlay and access to some Eudora features. This add-on was developed by Qualcomm as a part of their exit strategy for Eudora and fully funded by them. Their development team decided that they should release a binary add-on that only worked with the version it was compiled for, this was at least partially led by what they determined they needed to change. As the company withdrew funding for development after the initial release there were no community of developers around OSE to allow it to continue as a community project. It had but a single release, based on perhaps one of the buggiest releases of Thunderbird ever. Version 3.1 was released as a point release fairly quickly.

So there is no question that an OSE profile is the same as Thunderbirds'.

However there are some upgrade caveats. V5 and 68 of Thunderbird should be stepped through to that appropriate updates to the profile data occur. (I can not remember why I think V5 is needed. But V68 has password storage and certificate changes.

Appropriate version can be downloaded here http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/releases/

Thanks for that Matt. When I open that page is has a long list of releases. Do I click on the 'Dir 5.0/?

That takes me to another list of directories - but I can only see Windows 32 on it - and the new laptop is Windows 64-bit. Will win32 work?

Use win32 until it changes it for you. The primary differences are MAPI (send mail from file explorer etc) works more reliably in 32bit (most accounting packages that use it are still 32bit) and the memory requirements are lower. But The consumers wanted a 64 bit version to match their operating system. Perception won out mostly.

The layout of the server is version/ Operating system / Language version / setup executable You will want to download the executable and run after it downloads.

I also have a Eudora OSE related question: can I change the account settings after I have set it up. E.g. from POP to IMAP and from Non-SSL setting to TLS/SSL settings. Would I do this just by changing this in Tools/Settings?

When I transferred her from Eudora 7 to Eudora OSE earlier this week - I used her old settings which were POP/non-SSL but there's an issue with emails not showing 'remote content' - and she gets a lot of gobblydegook - I think where there are hyperlinks etc.

At the moment it's set up as POP3 - non-SSL. Using ports 110 and 587.

The recommended IMAP settings on the vip.me.uk website are: TLS/SSL settings recommended.

IMAP recommended.

Incoming server username: first name-surname-vip-me-uk Incoming password: Incoming server hostname: vipme.dns-systems.net Incoming server port: 993 (995 for POP3)

Outgoing server username: first name-surname-vip-me-uk Outgoing password: same as above Outgoing server hostname: vipme.dns-systems.net Outgoing server port 465

I have downloaded and opened Thunderbird 5.0

It is automatically showing all the Eudora OSE emails - which is encouraging! But it has a box saying 'Secure connection failed. Start.thunderbird.net:443 uses an invalid security certificate. The certificate is not trusted because the issuer certificate has expire. Error code:sec_error_expire_issue_certificate.

(Is this maybe related to my previous post re the settings in Eudora OSE?)

You can not change POP to IMAP or vise versa. Everything else is edited in account settings. Tools menu > account settings.

If you transferred her to ose this week, why did you not just transfer her to Thunderbird. With a working Eudora setup, Thunderbird until about V35 can import the data directly.

It looks as if it's trying to download messages and not succeeding. The error box gives me a choice of 'View certificate' or 'Cancel'

I have downloaded and opened Thunderbird 5.0 It is automatically showing all the Eudora OSE emails - which is encouraging! But it has a box saying 'Secure connection failed. Start.thunderbird.net:443 uses an invalid security certificate. The certificate is not trusted because the issuer certificate has expire. Error code:sec_error_expire_issue_certificate. (Is this maybe related to my previous post re the settings in Eudora OSE?)

Bitdefender and a whole host of anti virus programs use self signed certificates to hack the encrypted connections (largely negating encryption in my opinion) so they can man in the middle scan your communications. Bad I think, but you will probably need to either modify the anti virus to not scan stuff, or manually integrate the certificate into Thunderbirds certificate store. I would suggest you leave the error until you get to a current version as there have been many changes to TLS (SLL is actually no longer used) which may impact just how that plays out.

I am completely new to this. I tried to download Eudora 7 on her new laptop - but it kept crashing. At the time I was trying to keep her with Eudora - her preference. I then found Eudora OSE - which works without crashing - and I also understood (perhaps wrongly) that it would migrate to Thunderbird more easily than Eudora 7. Eudora OSE is working on the new laptop - but if I click to access 'remote content' it gets stuck with an alert message which won't close - and I have to go offline to remove it. (The friend is afraid of technical stuff - so Thunderbird seems to be a much better option for if she needs help from someone in the future.)