Too large a mail folder: was [SLUG] MS Outlook to Netscape mail conversion

[Michael Lake <Mike.Lake@nospam.uts.edu.au>]

Rodos wrote:
> My largest mail folder is 72Mb. I have a few over 50Mb and I can no longer
> open them in an IMAP client, they just time out. I am using the U
> Washington server. I can still append to the folder okay.
> 
> Anyone know what I can do about it appart from waiting for moores law to
> continue?

Just in case anyone does get this prob and they haven't got
good old trusty Pine to open the mail file with you can cut
you mail file into smaller chunks. 

1. Make a copy of your mail file say "cp SLUG SLUG.backup"
2. Fire up your vi or emacs and open the mail file that you
want to split. (I'll cover how to do this in vi only, quotes
)
3. Go to the last line and look at the line number - lets
say its 10,000
4. In vi go to a line around the middle ie "5000G". You
should now be around the middle of your file and this is
where we will split it.  
5. Search either forward ("/From ") or backward ("?From ")
from for a From with a trailing space character. When vi
finds one there should
be a blank line immediately above the "From ". If there is
then this is
where we can split our mail.

If there is not then we just happened to find a maverick
"From " 

   Eg here is a  snippet of the SGUG mail file in Pine.
--
SLUG - Sydney Linux Users Group Mailing List -
http://www.slug.org.au
To unsubscribe send email to slug-request@nospam.slug.org.au with
unsubscribe in the text

>From - Tue Jan 11 22:33:51 2000
Return-Path: <owner-slug@nospam.newtreno.spectrum.com.au>
Received: from bclass.spectrum.com.au ([203.101.23.85]) by
          postoffice.uts.edu.au (Netscape Messaging Server
4.15) with
          ESMTP id FO5A9D00.SA3 for <Mike.Lake@nospam.uts.edu.au>;
Tue, 11 Jan
          2000 11:20:01 +1100

6. Now we do the split.  Move the cursor so that its on that
blank line we found.
We are going to split the file into two new files SLUG1 and
SLUG2
   a. Enter the command ":1,.w SLUG1" 
   This writes from line 1 to the current line (.) ie up to
the blank line the file
   SLUG1.
   Move the cursor down from the blank line to the "From "
line. 
   Enter ".,$w SLUG2"
   This writes from current line to end of file to SLUG2
7. Exit vi ":q"

The old file SLUG should still be intact and unchanged an we
have our backup as well.
Open your mail reader and there will be two new mailfiles
SLUG1 and SLUG2.

They will also display in netscape mail but you have to
close Netscape Mail AND Netscape Navigator and reopen the
mail. Then the new folders called SLUG1 and SLUG2 will
appear.

Now this works fine for my mailer Pine and for Netscape. If
there is anything that I have left out here or said thats
incorrect I am sure that fellow sluggers will help out.

Mike

-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Lake
University of Technology, Sydney
Email: mailto:Mike.Lake@nospam.uts.edu.au Ph: 02 9514 1724 Fx: 02
9514 1628 
URL: http://www.science.uts.edu.au/~michael-lake/
Linux enthusiast, active caver and interested in anything
technical.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
--
SLUG - Sydney Linux Users Group Mailing List - http://www.slug.org.au
To unsubscribe send email to slug-request@nospam.slug.org.au with
unsubscribe in the text