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Here's some rudimentary documentation that might help you. You should also check out the FAQ.
Using Outport with the Generic Filters
Using Outport with the generic export filters is easy:
- Select the formats you want.
- Select the Outlook folders you want items exported from.
- Select the directory you want the items exported to.
- Press Export.
- Outlook may prompt you to allow another program to access it or not. Select the check box and pick one of the N minutes items from the combo box.
Outport will create a folder hierarchy that matches that of Outlook itself, with each item in the folder represented by a file in the corresponding directory.
The items aren't named very well though.
Using Outport with Evolution
Follow the instructions above. The Evolution filters create the directory structure and metadata files required by Evolution. For example, assume you're
exporting to c:\evolution. If you export your Contacts folder, Outport will create c:\evolution\local and c:\evolution\local\Contacts. Within the latter
directory, it will create the required addressbook.db and folder-metadata.xml files. Before you copy the files to your Linux box, you should run killev
for (Evolution 1.0.x or 1.2.x) or evolution --force-shutdown (for Evolution 1.4.x)
first, to shut down all the background daemons that Evolution uses. Then just copy the files into ~/evolution/local/Contacts on your Linux box and start
Evolution, and you'll see all of your Contacts.
Known Issues
- Attachments of any sort (eg, on mail messages, etc) aren't exported with the "non-Outlook" filters. If you are interested in a particular filter,
check here.
- Outport can't handle digital certificates. If someone wants to email me a digital certificate so I could fix this,
I'd appreciate it.
- There are issues with non-English support (the names of folders and such) that I'm still working on.
- Less of an issue and more of a design limitation... Outport interacts with Outlook via it's OLE interface. Outport
doesn't know anything at all about the underlying .pst file. It can't open arbitrary .pst files and, since I have no
desire at all to try to reverse engineer the .pst format, probably never will.
- You may notice that calendar items whose date should occur before 1970, such as birthdays and anniversaries, have their year set to 1970. This is actually an issue with
Evolution rather than Outport. Evolution can't seem to handle dates before 1970. Once this issue is addressed, I'll remove the workaround in Outport.
To Do
- Fix the Known Issues :-)
- Get pretty graphics.
- Add support for mbox (and Evolution's index files).
- Translate to other languages (if there is sufficient demand).
- Separate the filters into separate libraries so if, for example, you have no interest in exporting to Evolution, you don't need Berkeley DB to compile it.
- Add merge capabilities to Outport.
- Command-line interface for batch processing.
Compiling
To compile Outport, you'll need to download and compile Sleepy Cat Berkeley DB 3.1.17. The
root db-3.1.17 directory must be a sibling to the directory that the Outport source files are in. After compiling everything, you'll need to copy libdb31.dll and
libdb31d.dll to ../win32/Outport/bin and ../win32/Outport/bind respectively to actually run Outport.
History
The first version of this was written by Justin Kirby, called Olexp. It had minimal functionality, but handled the basic task of manipulating the OLE interface
to Outlook. He released it under the GPL. He expressly didn't want to develop it any more, so I forked the source and spent several weeks over Christmas 2001 extending,
reorganizing and rewriting it. I renamed it to Outport as well. Obviously, Outport continues to be licensed under the GPL.
Filter Reference
This section provides information on the different filters Outport supports.
There are, fundamentally, two different kinds of filters that Outport supports. Outlook itself can save various items to different external formats. In this case,
Outport merely tells Outlook to export a given item to a particular file; Outlook itself does all the hard work. With the second kind, Outport reads the individual fields
of each item and does all the work of exporting itself. This fundamental difference is noted in the column Uses Outlook?. The primary importance of this is in
my ability to fix bugs with it. If a filter "uses Outlook", then it is impossible for me to fix any bugs with that filter. For example, consider
bug #857741. The bug refers to the Calendar iCalendar filter,
which is a "uses Outlook" filter. When I test this using Outlook 2000, I can see, the generated files aren't RFC 2445 compliant. Unfortunately, this is a bug with
Outlook 2000; I can't directly fix it. Luckily, the Outport iCalendar filter doesn't use Outlook, so I can fix RFC 2445 compliance bugs in it (and the bug #857741 doesn't
manifest in that). Eventually, all filters will not use Outlook, but that will take time.
Calendar Filters
| Filter Name | Description | Uses Outlook? | Exports Attachments |
|---|
| Evolution Calendar |
Exports calendar items to the format Evolution stores calendar items in. This includes the required directories and metadata files. You just needt
to copy the directories under your Destination folder to your ~/evolution directory. |
No |
No |
| iCalendar |
All calendar items are exported to individual files a .ics extension. |
Yes |
Yes |
| Outlook Item |
All calendar items are exported to individual files with a .msg extension. |
Yes |
Yes |
| Outlook Item Template |
All calendar items are exported to individual files a .oft extension. |
Yes |
Yes |
| Outport iCalendar |
All calendar items are exported to individual files with a .ics extension. This filter should be more standards compliant than the iCalenar filter. |
No |
No |
| Text |
All calendar items are written out to individual text files. |
Yes |
Yes |
| VCalendar |
All calendar items are exported to individual files a .vcs extension. You will probably want to avoid this filter, as the format is out of
date and you will be unable to export any recurring appointments using it. |
Yes |
Yes |
Contacts Filters
| Filter Name | Description | Uses Outlook? | Exports Attachments |
|---|
| Evolution Contacts |
Exports contact items to the format Evolution stores contact items in. This includes the required directories and metadata files. You just need
to copy the directories under your Destination folder to your ~/evolution directory. |
No |
No |
| Outlook Item |
All calendar items are exported to individual files with a .msg extension. |
Yes |
Yes |
| Outlook Item Template |
All calendar items are exported to individual files a .oft extension. |
Yes |
Yes |
| Outport VCard |
All contact items are exported to individual files with a .vcf extension. This filter should be more standards complaint than the VCard
filter. |
No |
No |
| Rich Text Format |
All calendar items are exported to individual files a .oft extension. |
Yes |
Yes |
| Text |
All calendar items are written out to individual text files. |
Yes |
Yes |
| VCard |
All calendar items are exported to individual files a .vcf extension. |
Yes |
Yes |
Mail Messages Filters
| Filter Name | Description | Uses Outlook? | Exports Attachments |
|---|
| Native Format |
Outlook can handle a variety of different text formats (such as pure ASCII test, MS Rich Text Format, HTML and MS Word format).
Outlook can down-convert any of these to ASCII text, but otherwise can't convert between formats. So what Outport does is determine what type of text
format a message is saved in, and then tell Outlook to save it to that file type. If you look in your destination folder, you will typically see files with a
variety of different extensions. |
Yes |
Yes |
| Text |
All email messages are written out to individual text files. |
Yes |
Yes |
| Outlook Item |
All email messages are exported to individual files with a .msg extension. |
Yes |
Yes |
| Outlook Item Template |
All email messages are exported to individual files a .oft extension. |
Yes |
Yes |
Journal Filters
| Filter Name | Description | Uses Outlook? | Exports Attachments |
|---|
| Outlook Item |
All journal items are exported to individual files with a .msg extension. |
Yes |
Yes |
| Outlook Item Template |
All journal items are exported to individual files a .oft extension. |
Yes |
Yes |
| Rich Text Format |
All journal items are exported to individual files a .rtf extension. |
Yes |
Yes |
| Text |
All journal items are written out to individual text files. |
Yes |
Yes |
Notes Filters
| Filter Name | Description | Uses Outlook? | Exports Attachments |
|---|
| Outlook Item |
All notes are exported to individual files with a .msg extension. |
Yes |
No |
| Outlook Item Template |
All notes are exported to individual files a .oft extension. |
Yes |
No |
| Rich Text Format |
All notes are exported to individual files a .rtf extension. |
Yes |
No |
| Text |
All notes are written out to individual text files. |
Yes |
No |
Task Filters
| Filter Name | Description | Uses Outlook? | Exports Attachments |
|---|
| Evolution Tasks |
Exports tasks to the format Evolution stores tasks in. This includes the required directories and metadata files. You just needt
to copy the directories under your Destination folder to your ~/evolution directory. |
No |
No |
| Outlook Item |
All tasks are exported to individual files with a .msg extension. |
Yes |
Yes |
| Outlook Item Template |
All tasks are exported to individual files a .oft extension. |
Yes |
Yes |
| Outport iCalendar |
All tasks are exported to individual files with a .ics extension. |
No |
No |
| Rich Text Format |
All tasks are exported to individual files a .rtf extension. |
Yes |
Yes |
| Text |
All tasks are written out to individual text files. |
Yes |
Yes |
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