Outport - News

News - June 10, 2004

I've been working on adding support to only export items from selected categories. To do it properly, the change is turning out to be more pervasive than I had originally thought, hence it has taken me longer to do. I hope to get a new version out within the next few weeks that has this feature.

I have added a number of new questions and answers to the FAQ. Check it out!

News - Feb. 01, 2004

Apparently the bug I logged is a duplicate of #31662. It looks like a number of other people have logged this, so hopefully this will prompt someone to fix the bug.

News - Jan. 10, 2004

Just in case you were wondering, I logged that Evolution bug that I mentioned last time. It is #52744 if you're interested (at Ximian's bugzilla database).

News - Dec. 30, 2003

I got a few bugs fixed and new features in during the last few days:

• Added a workaround for an Evolution issue with dates that occur before 1970. Basically, appointments with dates before 1970 don't appear. Years from before that are now arbitrarily set to 1970 (you'll see a warning whenever this occurs), so that at least you still have the appointment.
• Fix for #857741. Two new filters were added (Outport iCalendar for tasks and appointments) to export tasks and calendar entries to individual iCalendar files. These filters are internal Outport filters, so they don't suffer from the problem with the other iCalendar filter. Furthermore, any other compliance bugs with these filters can be fixed.
• Fix for #864369 and #791602: Make sure that Outport filters out characters that can't be used in directory and file names.
• Fix for #864376: Replace Rich Text Format and HTML Format email filters with a new one called Native Format. This filter determines the format of each email message (Word doc, RTF, HTML or text) and exports it appropriately.
• Add ability to export attachments in Outlook filters.
• Added a documentation page here. I moved some stuff off the front page (and updated it) and added a reference for all the export filters that Outport supports.

News - July 21, 2003

Here's another new release with a couple more bugs squashed. I'll be out of town for the next few weeks, so if I seem unresponsive to bug reports and such, you'll know why.

• Fix for #706834 - There were actually several facets to this bug. One was that, if Outport was unable to create a directory it would get into an infinite loop continually trying to create it. The second is that certain characters are disallowed in folder and file names by the Windows file system. These are: \/:*?"<>| These characters are automatically removed from folder names now. Also, multiple spaces in folder names are trimmed down to one instance.
• Fix for #772630 - '=' characters weren't encoded correctly.
• Added the ability to export the 'raw' Evolution VCards. This is primarily a debugging tool (it was mostly just a matter of altering existing code), but someone who is handy with Perl/Python/shell scripts/whatever might find it useful. These will be different from the regular VCards that Outlook creates, since they will contain some Evolution-specific bits in them.

News - July 15, 2003

Apologies for the lack of updates over the past few months. Work has been INSANE and I haven't had much time for personal project. (On the bright side of course, is that I'm gainfully employed..)

Here is 1.1.23 for you guys (I made a typo in the file release part of Sourceforge. Doh!). I've tested Outport with Evolution 1.4 (what I'm currently using) and everything seems fine. The differences between this version and build 22 are:

• A few slight tweaks to the generated files, to accomodate slight differences with Evolution from 1.2.
• Fix for #662977 - Some address cards are blank in Evolution. Outport wasn't wrapping lines properly for multi-line addresses.
• I've started working on converting the whole thing to Unicode. Internally, the whole thing can build and run fine as Unicode. The next thing to do is write out fields using UTF-8 as appropriate. This should solve all the multilingual issues that people have had. In the meantime, I've ripped out what multilingual support was there, but since it was basically broken anyway, you shouldn't notice any loss of functionality.

News - January 06, 2003

I put up a new release a couple of days ago, but didn't get around to updating the page until now (xmas tech support; I'm sure you're familiar with it).

• Added an option so that all child folders are checked or unchecked when a folder is checked or unchecked.
• Fixed a dumb bug with the recurring appointment/task code, which wrecked havoc with appointments being exported to Evolution. This was something I broke in the previous build, sorry 'bout that.
• Corrected a minor error in the header portion of Evolution vcal files.
• Updated the zoneinfo files to those used in Evolution 1.2.
• Added code (as provided by Todd Brannam) to export appointments to iCalendar files. This uses native Outlook functionality though, so it's kind of flakey.
• The message dialog resizes and remembers its position now.

News - December 24, 2002

Happy Yule, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, Merry Kwanza, etc, etc. Here's a new release for, 1.1.21. It's another bug fix release:

• Fix for #646642 - Apparently calling the OLE method GetRecurrencePattern() actually sets the IsRecurring bit for the item, so check that bit first and only call GetRecurrencePattern if it's true.
• Fix for #646703 - Follow Outlook rules where certain properties are only valid for certain recurrence types, and ignore them otherwise.
• Removed the GetDescription call for folders again, since I was getting the bizarro errors with it.
• Exit Outport if Outlook can't be accessed for some reason.

I've spent some time investigating the problem where there are blank address cards in Evolution. Those represent valid addresses, though I can't seem to find any pattern to why a few would be blank and the others would appear normal. I've dumped the generated database, and everything appears normal there, so I suspect the bug is actually in Evolution, but I haven't found the cause yet.

Check out the new web site!

News - November 21, 2002

Here's another bug fix release, this one care of Nicholas Guarracino, who found and provided a fix for the requirement that Outlook be open. Thanks Nick!

News - November 11, 2002

Here's a minor update. It fixes some bugs with recurring appointments. The bigger news is that I've moved everything to Sourceforge now. There was some demand for it, but more importantly my ISP bill was climbing dramatically! :-) The official URL is http://outport.sourceforge.net/.

I updated to Evolution 1.2 today. It's pretty slick, except they took out the forward and backward buttons in the mail window (not the main window, the window for an individual email). I'll test it out shortly and make any fixes that are required.

• Fix problem where it wasn't converting appointments that recur, for example, the 2 Wednesday of every month.
• Fix problem where the number of occurences is too much, by using the UNTIL field in some cases instead.

News - October 6, 2002

After ignoring this for far too long, I've gotten off my butt and fixed some of the bugs that have been reported to me, and added a new feature or two:

• Fixed the conversion of large notes associated with a contact.
• Fixed the conversion of accented characters for the Evolution Calendar and Evolution Task filters, I hope. Being English myself, I haven't been able to test it as well as I'd like.
• If you exported using the Evolution filters several times, the new contacts/tasks/appointments would just get appended to the existing data files, so it would look like you'd get several copies of the same item. I added a selection so that you can choose whether you want to append to any existing items, or overwrite existing data files. (Of course, that begs the question "How about merge?". Not yet, maybe someday.)
• Fixed a bug where, under some circumstances, you'd get prompted more than once to specify where you are.
• Added a Help button that brings you here. :-)