I'm migrating 50 or so users from Eudora (either 6.2 or 7) into Outlook 2007
(POP / SMTP without Exchange Server). Some have many many (like multiple
gigabytes of) filed messages; some have big and complex address books with
group emails. One has both of the above, and also uses color-coding in
Eudora so much that it's a way of life, central to her arranging and
prioritizing her workload. She is, of course, the top director of our
organization.

Outlook has color-coding also, in the form of message "Categories." So the
$64K question is: Is there some systematic import procedure that will
preserve the color-coding?

Not being one to take while giving nothing back, here are my findings in
other areas, which I hope may be helpful to others in similar upgrade
situations:

1) for importing messages, do yourself a favor and get Aid4Mail. It is not
terribly expensive, and it will avoid the mess and discomfort of being burned
at the stake by your users when they discover that the native import feature
in Outlook has ditched the attachments and date stamps in their folder-stored
messages, while at the same time un-hiding the previously hidden HTML markup.

2) for importing the address book ... this is not by any means perfect, but
here's the best I've come up with so far. (Sadly, Aid4Mail does not handle
migration of Eudora Address Books into Outlook Contacts. And Eudora's
nndbase.txt file is a slag-heap way to store contacts, imposing no standards
whatsoever, as for instance, requiring or not requiring explicit
at-domain-name-dot-top-level-domain suffixes, delimiting group email /
Distribution Lists inconsistently.) First: open Outlook Express -- yes, so
annoying, the wizard -- via Start: Run: msimn. Then import other address
book, browse to your Eudora folder containing nndbase.txt, and do the do.
Next -- RATHER than open Outlook and import from OE -- stay WITHIN Outlook
Express and export the address book to a .CSV file. You'll get better
results, for some reason, if you then open Outlook and import the .CSV file,
being sure to specify the Contacts folder as the target.

Hope this helps! And I beg someone knowledgeable to reply about the
color-coding. I thought I saw some users ducking into a conference room with
kindling and flagons of oil, and they wouldn't make eye contact ...

Nathan wrote:

Outlook has color-coding also, in the form of message "Categories."
So the $64K question is: Is there some systematic import procedure
that will preserve the color-coding?

I'd be very surprised if there's any way to preserve Eudora's coloring.
--
Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook]