14 DAY TRIAL // Despite the popularity of instant messaging, emails are still a very important component of our life, especially in a corporate environment. And, for managing them, we all have what we think to be the best email client on the market for us. But that's until we take a look around the corner and realize that all the options we've been comfortably using are overrated and the current email client becomes second best.
However, moving to a new email client raises a problem many of us have wrestled with time and again: converting all emails to the new format of the improved client. Fortunately, the issue has been addressed and many email clients come with data exporting/importing options. On the downside, it happens more than often for the new client not to support the format. Sometimes, losing that big pile of information is out of the question and that's when complications kick in.
Lucky you there is Aid4Mail on the market, an application specially designed for converting the old mail to new client's format (integrating them in the new mail manager depends entirely on new client's import function). The application comes in three versions, Standard (which does not support certain features) priced at $24.95, Professional and Enterprise (the only difference between them is the licensing) priced at $49.95/license and $1999.95/site.
Trial version analyzed here covers all the functionality of a Professional version with only one limitation: it cannot process more than 50 emails per folder. There is no trial period and all the power of the Professional version is available with no restriction.
There isn't much to say on the interface except that it is extremely easy to use and poses absolutely no problem while using it. The fact that it is built under the form of a wizard and all you have to do is to pick the convenient options and push "Next" plays an important role in this sense. The first panel explains the limitations of the trial mode and the difference between Standard and Professional editions.
After that, it gets straight down to business by prompting you to choose the type of mail you want to convert. Aid4Mail supports a myriad of formats, from the most used email clients like Outlook Express (older versions are supported), Windows Mail, Eudora, Mozilla (Mozilla Mail, Thunderbird, Netscape Messenger), Pegasus Mail or The Bat!, to less popular ones like ProcoMail & Barca and Opera or generic mailbox formats, so you really have nothing to worry about.
Next step involves choosing the location where your old email client stores all the emails. This should be easy for you as the application automatically goes straight to the source if you enable the automatic search for mail location. If you want to find out the mail location for other email clients refer to Finding Mail Folders section of Help file.
The great thing is that you can choose which messages to retrieve and, if you do not need the data in Sent folder, for instance, or have multiple accounts and only wish to convert part of the messages, here's the way to do it. On the other hand, if you need all messages, make sure that upon choosing the folder you tick the "Include subfolders" option in the lower part of the screen.
Unlike the source format of the data, target format is not as flexible and rich in options. But there are plenty of formats to choose from. You can even compress them to a ZIP archive or turn them into MHT format and view them in a compatible web browser all stacked up in folders (check out the last image at the end of the review).
Aid4Mail sports a message filtering option that allows converting and selecting only specific messages that correspond to the enforced criteria. Emails can be filtered by date ("ignore if older than" or "if newer than" options) having as date to check either stored mail, sent mail or received mail, or you can filter them by header content (you can create lists of words for future reference).
One of the last steps requires defining a location on the disk for saving all the emails and the target line format (MS Windows, UNIX and Linux or MAC). My advice is to store it in a preset folder in order to have all the files in the same location.
Exporting options will not give you too much of a headache and come in handy if you want to trim the messages of attachments or convert the message into plain text. At the final stage of configuring the conversion you get to see the main settings: email client to retrieve messages from, format of the emails and location to store them. "Start" button unleashes the conversion process which takes a few seconds (processing 173 messages took less then five seconds during our testing).
You can view a report with all processed messages and un-processed ones. Unless you compact all the folders there may be unprocessed messages, but this is normal as Aid4Mail deals only with valid messages. Deleting an email from a folder will only hide it in the email client, but the message is still available. Compacting the folders will purge all deleted emails and clear out some space.
Aid4Mail may not have eye-candy features and its list of options may not be complete but it does a great job with converting the messages. The process is very fast and accurate. The downside is that it does not take care of other data as well, like Address Book or part of the settings.
The Good
Aid4Mail lets you migrate all your mail to a new email client fast and with little to no hassle. The wizard-like interface is extremely easy to handle and appropriate for any type of user.
It supports a great deal of email formats and comes with email filtering options that allows conversion of messages that comply to the specific date and content criteria.
The Bad
Professional version definitely is the most features rich and appropriate one even for a home user but its price is quite high.
Although it supports a myriad of email clients, the list is not yet complete, but I have to admit it supports the most popular email managing software on the market.
I wish it would be able to save address book data as well, as part of the settings available in the older email client.
The Truth
It does a great job and moves fast. Sure, there is still room for improvements, but there is plenty of time to bring all the adjustments. The list of supported formats can be extended but it already covers the most popular clients as it is. Also, introducing the ability to copy address book data and certain settings would be a great plus for the application.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
