Importing Recovered Or Legacy Emails to Apple Mail
In Tiger, OSX 10.4, Apple changed the format of mailboxes in Apple Mail from the standard MBOX format to EMLX files. It’s plausible that in recovering data from a hard drive that both formats will be found.
In recovering data using applications such as SubRosaSoft' FileSalvage and MacForensicsLab Apple Mail is particularly picky in the kind of files it will recognize and import, and the wrong text encoding is enough to cause problems. The trick is therefore to use a series of applications to import and convert the files so that they can finally be reimported to Apple Mail.
Recovery Using EMLX-to-MBOX Converter
The application to start with is an EMLX to MBOX converter. Once downloaded and installed, use the software to select the files and then convert them into an MBOX format. This makes it possible to import the emails not into Mail but into any other email client, such as Microsoft Entourage. Having successfully imported the emails you can then import them to Apple Mail.
To import the MBOX file to an email client such as Entourage, simply open the app and then select “Import” from the File menu and follow the instructions. After importing the file, go to Apple Mail and do the same, selecting “Import” from the file menu and following the instructions.
This process makes it a lot easier to actually recover your files intact, as well as to be able to read the contents of the emails, without having to see all the raw internet mail headers, that most, if not all, email clients hide to the average user. One has to bear in mind that when performing digital recovery or eDiscovery and forensics that any email attachments such as jpegs, gifs, word docs and more may well be recovered as a separate entity also, and so you may easily duplicate recovered data.
Mail Recovery Using Emailchemy
Another email conversion application available is Weirdkid's Emailchemy, designed to: recover and export email from an old application or file format and import that into a new email application; to convert emails from regular formats for insertion into database, long-term archiving or forensics analysis; to repair or clean mailbox files, condense and/or split email files and archives. The good thing about Emialchemy is that it works on Macintosh, Windows or Linux.
Emailchemy is also great because not only does it allow you to convert files from emlx to mbox format but it also allows you to recover and migrate emails from legacy emails apps like AOL, Compuserve, Claris Emailer, Mulberry, Musashi, Outlook Express and MANY more ... and the software essentially works by operating an embedded IMAP server, making it easier for your IMAP enabled email client to access and read the emails into it's own database.
Though not FREE like emlx-to-mbox converter, you can use the demo for Emailchemy to ensure that the software does in fact convert and allow you to recover your emails before buying the full version and at $28 (single user household license) and $249 (single user forensics license) is a real snip for anyone who needs to recover emails from all manner of email client on a regular basis. For a full list of supported email formats both for reading and writing, as well as other output formats, visit the Emailchemy web page.
Conclusion: A Couple of Good Email Conversion Options
EMLX-to-MBOX converter and Emailchemy provide a couple of decent options concering the conversion and recovery of emails from legacy email applications or for forensics and eDiscovery purposes. Both applications provide FREE use, though Emailchemy only the once for testing purposes, and both do an excellent job of converting emails, without any complaints. Out of the two, despite the price tag, I would pick emailchemy as the better option, merely because of its advanced status and flexibility.