Outport - Frequently Asked Questions

Just unzip the zip file that you downloaded to any directory and run outport.exe. There is no installation per se.

Unfortunately, the behaviour you are seeing is a limitation of the OLE interface that Outport uses. The only way around that, that I know of, is to copy the folders you are interested in to your Outlook Today folder. I am in the process of rewriting Outport so it uses the MAPI interface, but I unfortunately don't have a lot of time to devote to it, so I can't give you an estimate on when this will be finished. (See below for more information).

The main reason would be that you don't have Outlook (from Microsoft Office) installed. However, I've heard reports from people who do have Outlook installed, yet they still get this error message. It could be that Outlook's type library wasn't registered on your system when it was installed. I'm trying to see if if I can detect this.

Unfortunately, Outport doesn't support moving your email from Outlook into Evolution. I hope that some day it will. For now, I believe that Mozilla can import your email from Outlook, and Evolution can import email from Mozilla. However, I've never tried this myself so I can't advise you on the process.

No you can't. Outport doesn't know anything about .pst files. It uses the OLE interface to Outlook, so it can only retrieve information that is available through that interface.

Unfortunately, no. I hope to eventually support Outlook Express, but this will require significant changes to Outport to support.

You need Visual C++ 6 and Sleepycat db 3.1.17 (which you can get from here). If the compiler complains about missing db.h, then you don't have Sleepycat in a place where the compiler expects to find it. The project files for Outport are set up such that it expects the Sleepycat db zip file to be expanded in a directory called db-3.1.17, as in the diagram to the right. When you compile it, the binaries are created in win32/bin and win32/bind (release and debug respectively). You should copy the Sleepycat library from db-3.1.17/build_win32/Release and db-3.1.17/build_win32/Debug to bin and bind respectively. (Compiling Sleepycat is straightforward; there is a Berkeley_DB.dsw workspace file in the build_win32 directory.)

You can email me at chief1ic@sourceforge.net. That is the best way. I know that Sourceforge provides mailing lists and online discussion groups, but I don't remember to check those very often.

Yes I am. Sorry 'bout that. I do answer most email that is sent to me, but sometimes it takes me a week or two to get to it. It isn't anything to do with you, I'm just busy and slow at responding to email. If it's any consolation, I'm just as bad with friends too.

Aw shucks! Thanks for the offer, but I have a nice job and I don't really need any more money. And if you sent me money, I would just feel guilty for not working on Outport more often than I do. But if you really want to show your appreciation, you can send money to the Electronic Frontier Canada, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or the equivalent in your own country.

I am actually in the process of rewriting it completely. There are a number of features that people have asked for or that I would like to support that require a new architecture (or, more accurately, an architecture since the original Outport was never really architected). These include:

• Support Outlook Express, via MAPI.
• Proper internationalization support.
• A command-line interface
• The ability to migrate more than just PIM data. Bookmarks, for example, would be a nice and easy thing to migrate.
• An interface for "Grandmothers". It would be a dialog box with one button on it labelled "Backup my data". Pressing the button would create a single file that they could move around. Then they would fire up Linux and start GOutport (Gnome version) or KOutport (KDE version). Those versions would have one or two buttons, one of which is labelled "Restore my data". Clicking that button would then read in the Outport data file and copy all of their data to the relevant directories or programs. Someday...
• Support Mac OS X and some variant of BeOS. (This will happen after the previous item does, so don't hold your breath.

I do have code in progress, but it still doesn't really do much, and I'm not really willing to share it until it is actually useful. However, if you're willing to contribute code, drop me a line and I'll send you a zip file.