Outlook .PST to Entourage
Update: Eric Caldwell turned me onto a solution for doing this conversion / import, plus a whole lot more email migration related tasks. It’s called Emailchemy. You can pick that tool up here for $29. Well worth the money if you ask me.
Okay, so I posed a question today on Twitter to some of my friends who are hardcore Mac users as to how I can import my Windows based Microsoft Outlook .PST files (containing 11 years worth of business data) into Microsoft Entourage on my new MacBook Pro. I know that there has to be a way to do this, I did a little research the other day and found some possibilities but none have panned out yet…
2 Possible Solutions that Didn’t Work Out…
- O2M – this solution just works if you are bringing Mac based Outlook 2001 files into Entourage 2004 (and up) and will do nothing for you if you have .PST files originating in a Windows Environment.
- Microsoft PST Import Tool – ran into the same situation w/ this solution as well.
There has to be a way to do this…
I know that there has to be a solution out there for handling this type of migration, but for the life of me I can’t seem to find it. It looks like to me if Mac wanted to grow into the business sector, they would benefit greatly by coming up w/ some sort of conversion / import functionality and distribute the heck out of it. I am still looking while juggling a few projects today but will update this post as soon as I find a solution.
In the meantime, until I can spend some quality time researching a solution for doing this, if any of you out there have any suggestions for me, I would love to hear from you, please fee free to leave a comment…
Rumors About Microsoft Opening .PST Data Format
If you follow the information technology industry very close you might have heard some rumblings that Microsoft plans on opening up their proprietary PST data format documentation to developers under the OSP, or Open Specification Promise. The documentation they release will contain how data is stored, guidance for accessing the data, and how to navigate the folder hierarchy and how various objects are stored.
By allowing this data format to be made open, developers can now read, create and interoperate with data inside client or target .PST files. This is absolutely huge in my opinion, and I know that I don’t often compliment Microsoft for doing good things, but this is one case where I am applauding them. Microsoft Outlook, which utilizes the .PST data format is by far the industry leading business email client. Personally I have been using Microsoft Outlook since I left the farm, my entire business history is contained in my .PST file, that’s past appointments, archives, contacts, tasks, etc. It’s mind boggling to consider until you start looking at alternative solutions (and there really isn’t one on the market right now).
Regarding the move to open up the .PST Format here are some comments I found online at ARS Technica:
The company says that providing access to the documentation will facilitate interoperability by enabling customers and vendors to access their data in .PST files across a variety of platforms. Organizations that need to exchange key corporate data in and out of Outlook, upload to the cloud, or comply with corporate governance policies, will find this particularly useful.
On the one hand, this could improve Microsoft’s chances to make the .PST file format the unofficial standard in the area of e-mail data storage, while it’s equally possible that it could help Outlook and Exchange competitors make it easier for companies to switch away from Redmond’s products. Microsoft wants its message to be that this is a good move, as it will make the data more portable across various applications and platforms.
Rackspace recently published an interesting outlook on their blog too about the future:
Longer term, Outlook could become an apps platform where we see all sorts of third-party apps being developed that add value to the core feature-set of Microsoft Outlook, similar to what you see with Facebook Apps today but on your desktop. However, in order for this to play out, Microsoft will need to do more than just open up the storage format. They will have to also redesign Outlook with apps in mind so that apps can be easily developed and can feel like an integrated part of Outlook. They’ll also need to launch some sort of an “app store” model for third parties to distribute their apps, such as what has worked so successfully for Apple’s iPhone apps.
I also found a little bit more official post on bink.nu regarding this announcement, while I am not for certain if this announcement came directly from Microsoft or not, it sounds promising:
Data portability has become an increasing need for our customers and partners as more information is stored and shared in digital formats. One scenario that has come up recently is how to further improve platform-independent access to email, calendar, contacts, and other data generated by Microsoft Outlook.
On desktops, this data is stored in Outlook Personal Folders, in a format called a .pst file. Developers can already access the data stored in the .pst file, using Messaging API (MAPI) and the Outlook Object Model—a rich set of connections to all of the data stored by Outlook and Exchange Server—but only if Outlook is installed on the desktop.
In order to facilitate interoperability and enable customers and vendors to access the data in .pst files on a variety of platforms, we will be releasing documentation for the .pst file format. This will allow developers to read, create, and interoperate with the data in .pst files in server and client scenarios using the programming language and platform of their choice. The technical documentation will detail how the data is stored, along with guidance for accessing that data from other software applications. It also will highlight the structure of the .pst file, provide details like how to navigate the folder hierarchy, and explain how to access the individual data objects and properties.
This documentation is still in its early stages and work is ongoing. We are engaging directly with industry experts and interested customers to gather feedback on the quality of the technical documentation to ensure that it is clear and useful. When it is complete, it will be released under our Open Specification Promise, which will allow anyone to implement the .pst file format on any platform and in any tool, without concerns about patents, and without the need to contact Microsoft in any way.
I guess we will just have to wait and see how this unfolds. For me personally I will be setting up Google Alerts because I want to know the exact minute it happens.
20 Advantages w/ Pleth’s Business Class Email
Yesterday I was speaking with a close friend who owns a software company that caters to a Niche market inside the healthcare industry. He has had a lot of success in the software industry over the years and is a whole lot of fun to collaborate with. As of late he and I have a couple of personal projects that we have been working on together and it’s been an awesome experience. We have been looking for some opportunities as to where we could actually partner our two companies together with a product or service offering of some sort.
We have had a lot of ideas so far, but nothing to announce yet. One thing however that he and I have discussed was the popularity of our business class email solutions. I was telling him how easy our solution is to roll-out and how cost effective, even for larger scale operations, it can be as opposed to managing email in-house. Another aspect that he and I have been monitoring closely is the need for a solid email archiving solution in the healthcare industry. Just about everyone of his existing clients right now are required to do some sort of email archiving and data retention. This is an area that my business partners and I feel like we can be extremely successful in 2010, so look for a lot more blog posts from me on Email Archiving in the upcoming months.
My friend asked me to put together some high-points about our Email Solution that I thought might be of value to his niche client base in the Health Care Industry so we could have a starting point to put together some sort of partnership / plan of attack. Here’s 20 talking points in relation to our email solution. This is just a broad overview, if you are interested in additional information, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
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- No Hardware Leases or Software Licenses to Manage!
- No Long Term Contacts (Month to Month Service)
- Standard Accounts Have 10GB of Mailbox Storage Space (Scalable)
- Standard Accounts Have the Ability to Send / Receive 50mb File Attachments.
- Standard Accounts Have Free Backup & Synchronization Tools.
- Extremely Intuitive Ajax Driven Webmail User Interface (Access Email From Any Computer)
- Compatible with Desktop Email Clients (Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.)
- Compatible with Smartphone’s (Blackberry, Palm, HTC, iPhone, etc.)
- Compatible with all Standard Email Protocols (PHP3, IMAP, SMTP)
- Popular Groupware Applications (Shared Contacts, Calendars, etc.)
- Popular Business Productivity Apps (Tasks, Subtasks, Notes, etc.)
- User Level Account Management (Change Password, Personal Settings, etc.)
- Administrator Level Account Management (Management of Services, Users, etc.)
- Administrator Level Reporting for System Interactions (Users, Activity, Date, Time, IP Addresses)
- Advanced Spam & Virus Protection (Server Level)
- Advanced SSL & DoD Encryption w/ HMAC=SHA1 Authentication for Device to Device Communications
- Top Tier Secure Datacenter / Multiple Backbone Providers / Redundancy
- Scalable for Future Growth / From 1 Mailbox to 10,000
- Adherence to Regulatory Compliance Regulations (PCI, DSS, SBO, HIPPAA, etc.)
- Optional Email Archiving & Retention Solutions (Low-Cost Add-On)
Thoughts on Email Archiving & Regulatory Compliance
I recently wrote a post for our corporate website about Sarbanes-Oxley and the impact it has on corporate email archiving and retention. Lately I have been hearing a lot of friends in the IT industry talk about how they are being forced to comply with stronger regulatory guidelines for industry compliance. Granted, this is not anything new, the whole Sarbanes-Oxley thing went into affect in 2002 right after Enron, Tyco, and WorldCom left their shareholders wondering what had happened to their investment portfolios. The ultimate goal for Sarbanes-Oxley, as best that I can tell, was to mandate a level of accountability and transparency to corporations, especially publicly traded corporations, and to protect the interests of shareholders and investors.
Since 2002 there have also been many instances where records from corporations have been subpoenaed by a grand jury to investigate various allegations. In some of these instances the corporations claimed that they did not have these records. The regulatory compliance and data retention aspect of how many businesses do business today is still unacceptable so many industries are starting to roll out these regulations (that all resemble Sarbanes-Oxley in some form or another) to protect the integrity of their industries.
This is where Pleth gets involved. Our premium email solution has been an extremely product for us over the years with many of our business clients. Whether it’s a small business or a Fortune 500 company, our email solution is top notch. Given the fact that a lot of our existing clients are starting to inquire about email data retention and archiving we have added that service as an add-on to our email service. There is a per box fee for archiving tacked on at the end of each month, the charges for this service are nominal in comparison to what it would cost to bring an archival system in house.
If you are interested in learning more about email archiving, please don’t hesitate to contact us to discuss your needs. My partners and I would love the opportunity to work with your company in 2010.
Checkout the O’Reilly Answers Social Network
I am typically not one to recommend a social network to my clients w/ the exception, of course, of the already established networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc. My whole philosophy regarding social networking at this stage of the game is that if you want to build a community, build upon what’s already out there as much as possible (Facebook API, Twitter API) and don’t try to re-invent the wheel.
However, I have always felt that strong, reputable Niche networks could exist externally if they were packaged correctly. A good example of such a network that is currently in Beta right now is O’Reilly Answers. O’Reilly has a good vision with this network, and of course they have some really positive things in their favor already such as Awesome Reputation, an Established Following, and a Trusted Name, what more could you ask for?
You can also look at the Network and tell that there were some clear objectives put into place while developing this solution. They obviously wanted it to be user friendly, functional, and interactive. There are basically three ways you can interact inside O’Reilly Answers:
Share Your Knowledge
You can actually enter in blog posts and tag them according to your subject matter and other users can comment you on your posts. This is one area that I think they could have done a little differently. We all manage our own blogs externally, why would we want to post our content on their website as well and have 2 comment systems running at the same time to follow up w/ readers? My thoughts on this part are that they could have put into place some sort of RSS option where you could aggregate your content from your blog and have your friends inside the network click out to read your posts. Maybe I am not seeing the big picture on this, but as a workaround I posted about 3/4 of 2 blog posts into their network along w/ a link at the bottom to get to the remainder of my post on my blog.
Ask A Question
Since O’Reilly has been catering to the Technically Minded community for so long, you can rest assured that some pretty sharp folks are going to be hanging around in this community. Well, let’s say you have a question about a project you are working on, you can post that question to the community, tag it, and before you know it some of the sharpest minds in the world are answering your question. This is an area where I really see this network having value for a lot of us…
Answer a Question
Let’s say someone asks a question and you know the answer, you can provide them w/ your insight w/ ease. I think that this networking model is going to speed up the “obstacle to solution process” once the network get’s off the ground.
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Also, just a few notes regarding the Network as it is right now. There are obviously some bugs, I had a couple of errors pop up on me when I was setting up my profile, this is to be expected w/ a new release like this. Give them time, I am sure that O’Reilly will iron out all of the kinks very soon. Here’s some basic information that was forwarded to me today from our Account Rep at O’Reilly…
We’re launching the beta of O’Reilly Answers, and I’m inviting you to be part of it. In brief, O’Reilly Answers is a community site for sharing knowledge, asking questions, and providing answers that brings together our customers, authors, editors, conference speakers, and Foo (Friends of O’Reilly).
Why Answers, and why now?
O’Reilly is at the center of an amazing exchange of knowledge sharing and idea generation. We’ve created the usual means of facilitating communication between customers, O’Reilly folks, and the outside experts we call "alpha geeks" who contribute to O’Reilly books, conferences, and websites. We can connect through reader reviews, errata submissions, book forums, blog comments, Get Satisfaction, our customer service department, and more. But too much of this conversation is siloed, and not enough is public (e.g., discussions on our internal mailing list for editors, or personal responses to customer questions). O’Reilly Answers will be the place where much of that communication happens from this point forward.Why participate?
The lofty reason: Like O’Reilly, you want to "change the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators." That’s our mission, and we’ve been fortunate enough to build a community of passionate, committed people who love to learn and share their knowledge as they work towards a better world for us all.The "nice, but what’s in it for me" reasons: reputation, recognition, and rewards.
Get Recognized: "Find interesting people" is a core activity at O’Reilly, and an important component of our success. We see Answers as an important way to discover and connect with our next authors, online instructors, videographers, and speakers.
Build Your Reputation: You’ve learned a lot, why not get credit for all that knowledge? As your submissions to Answers are voted up, your personal reputation on the site increases. At launch, your reputation will be based solely on your participation in O’Reilly Answers. Soon, we’re expanding across oreilly.com, so the book errata and book reviews you’ve submitted, books you’ve registered, and conferences you’ve attended, will add reputation points. You’ll also earn badges to mark accomplishments and milestones.
Earn Rewards: Glory is great, but discounts and deals are nice, too. We want to reward your contributions to the O’Reilly community. Shortly we’ll have a point-based system in place that you can redeem for books, training, courses, and conferences. Details soon, but in the meantime, any actions you take now will count towards your total points.
This is just v.1: The best part of any project on the web is watching it take on a life of its own. With that in mind, we’re looking forward to *your* suggestions about where O’Reilly Answers should go, what features should be added, and what benefits and rewards we can offer all of you.
I’d like to acknowledge the projects that have proceeded Answers and inspired us, such as SitePoint Forums (we distribute their books), StackOverflow, Yahoo! Answers, Knol, and many others. They’re great resources, and we think the O’Reilly community can create a useful site that’s, well, a different kind of animal.
One last thing: O’Reilly Answers is in beta and you may encounter bugs. We’re still working on many improvements to the site, such as feeds for each tag, but would love to hear your suggestions for features and improvements. Please send any suggestions/questions/bug reports to answers@oreilly.com.
Until next time–
Marsee Henon
Also, if you should signup, be sure to add me as a friend, http://people.oreilly.com/cotton
Need Your Thoughts on Nov. #RefreshCA – Google Wave
Okay, so we decided at our last Central Arkansas Refresh meeting that we were going to hold our monthly meeting a week earlier in November due to the holidays. Our meeting date is November 17th (which is the 3rd Tuesday), so please help spread the word about this…
Since the topic that we have all pretty much agreed upon is going to be Google Wave the idea has been tossed around that we do a group or panel demo of the product for the benefit of those that have not had an opportunity to play with it yet. I think that this will also give those of us who haven’t spent a lot of time in Wave an excellent opportunity to pick up on some of the advanced functionality from those within the group that have spent some time with it.
What I have been kind of wrestling with is how do we do a group type demonstration like this? Do we station people w/ laptops at each table and just have people gather around? I am thinking that this is probably the best approach, but am open to suggestions…
Also, given the fact that there are still a lot of people waiting on their invites, and haven’t had an opportunity to really get up to speed w/ Wave, I think it would be worthwhile for maybe someone in our group (that has some experience w/ Wave) to give a 5 minute overview of what we are looking at, any volunteers?
I am really looking forward to this meeting, I think it’s going to be highly interactive, not to mention showcasing an emerging technology that is exploding on the scene, which is a the reason we do these meetings in the first place. Okay, so…
- What are your thoughts on the meeting format?
- What are your thoughts on having a moderator or 2 to navigate us through the demo?
- Anyone interested in being a Moderator?
First Impressions of Google Wave
Okay, so I finally got around to checking out Google Wave today. I have had the invitation sitting in my inbox for a while now and just haven’t had a free moment to check it out until today. My first impression of it wasn’t all that great until I was able to wrap my head around the big picture. I will be the first to admit that I am still learning all of the bells and whistles so bear with me…
The first thing I noticed when I logged in was that it’s an actual live conversation, as opposed to email which is lot less dynamic in theory. Some of my friends from the Central Arkansas Refresh community (Keith Crawford, Bryan Jones, Rob McBryde, Arlton Lowry, and Greg Henderson) had already included me in a few waves that they had going so I jumped in to see if I could get the hang of it without actually watching the tutorials or reading anything. Not so much…
Spend a Few Minutes and Get Up to Speed…
One of the first things I did out of the box was stick my reply in the wrong place and it hosed up the whole works. No, I didn’t really hose up the works, but for someone as OCD as me, it was devastating. It took me a few minutes to learn how to properly reply in between waves, and watching this video on YouTube sure helped out a lot too…
The Playback Feature is Cool…
One feature that I really think is neat is the playback feature, it allows you to get up to speed a lot faster than you normally would if you were working with email that was being passed around between several different people, all replying to various elements of a communication.
Sluggish Out of the Box…
As you might expect, Wave is not perfect in it’s current state, there are some bugs naturally. One of the things that I noticed was that in Firefox I kept having issues w/ the page refreshing or getting locked up. Someone suggested that I try Google Chrome and immediately that seemed to help out w/ the performance issues I was having.
Final Thoughts…
I am still playing around with the application right now, and have only spent a grand total of 30 minutes with it so far, but my initial thoughts were that Google is going to face an uphill battle rolling this solution out to the general public. For the most part I think that our clients find email to be intuitive and easy to get up and running with out of the box. With Wave, it’s going to be a lot different. I’m not saying that I am a genius by any means but I can usually take a web application that I have never seen before and get up to speed with it pretty quickly, without having to watch a tutorial or read a manual. I honestly had to take a step back and wrap my head around wave.
Now, do I think it’s a viable product? Heck yes, I think it’s going to definitely find it’s place into our daily lives at some point, when I am not sure. In the business realm we are looking for ways to increase efficiency and boost productivity. Since Google Wave resembles a conversation more than it does an email, I think it’s going to relevant for sure. I am anxious to see what the future holds for this product…
What is Google Wave?
If you are curious as to what in the world I am talking about, Google Wave is the latest tool from Google that is currently in preview mode right now for people to try out. You have to have an invite to get into to try the software right now, I am not for sure how much longer that is going to be the case. Here’s an explanation of Wave that I found on Google’s website:
A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.
A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.
A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.
By the way, if you are currently using Google Wave, you can connect to me at: cotton.rohrscheib@googlewave.com.
Advantages to Outsourcing Business Class Email
This past weekend my business partners and I went away on our annual corporate retreat to discuss our existing business model and to evaluate each of our products and services. We each agreed that our most popular solution is one that we don’t spend a lot of time promoting, our premium email solution. There are several advantages to businesses that chose to outsource their email to us, in this post I plan to cover a few of these bullet points.
I am also including a presentation that I put together regarding our solution, click on the play button below to start the presentation. If you would like to learn more about business class email solutions, please feel free to drop me a note and I will be glad to schedule a time w/ you to discuss your needs in more detail…
- You Get Our Team of Experts - When you turn to a hosted solution, it’s as though you suddenly have an entire staff of experts working for you—serving as an extension of your IT department and allowing your in-house team to focus on the other critical aspects of your infrastructure.
- Our Cutting Edge Technology - Since hosted solutions, like ours, focus on their specific area of expertise, we can stay on top of the latest advances in their industry. We also have the resources to implement and maintain a variety of technologies.
- Reliable Access - We guarantee 100% satisfaction. If you’re not satisfied, we’re not satisfied. This is why we won’t force you into long-term contracts. If we fail you, we’ll give you your money back and help you take your business elsewhere.
- No Setup or Maintenance Concerns - When you turn to a hosted solution like ours, you immediately have a fully equipped, top-of-the-line system that will be continually updated and maintained. This saves you thousands of dollars in server hardware, software, upgrades, and the expertise to run it all.
- Reduced Costs - You can take these system deployment and maintenance expenses out of the budget. You will always benefit from the latest in hardware and software technology, managed by experienced engineers, with no additional costs and no unexpected fees.
- Scalability - When your company grows, your infrastructure must also grow even faster. Since hosting providers, like Pleth, have extensive hardware and software resources, we can scale smoothly and easily. Cloud hosting, in particular, is especially designed for scalability—since you use only the infrastructure resources you need.
- Scalability: Cloud Computing Advantage - We’re always ready for your growth. Thanks to the elastic nature of cloud computing, we can automatically add hardware and adjust settings from the cloud so that you don’t miss a beat—and you only pay for what you need, and nothing you don’t.
- Automatic Backups & Data Recovery – As Hosting Providers we know that you have entrusted us with your invaluable data—so we design their systems to protect that data. We have the resources to implement exhaustive backup and data recovery systems. We back up your data every night, in multiple geographic locations, in our top-tier data centers. And if a user accidentally deletes an email or email folder, you can restore it easily through our control panel at no cost—even up to 14 days after the data was deleted.
- Storage & Transmission Security - Businesses can spend thousands of dollars to protect their data—or they can save thousands by turning to a hosted system like ours. We integrate extensive security measures to protect your data from physical threats—such as theft, overheating, power outages, and fire—as well as technical threats from hackers or prying eyes. Our data centers are designed to protect your data from all physical and technical threats. And to secure your data during its journey through cyberspace, our system uses DoD standards-based protocols, as well as extended SSL encryption, and we meet all PCI DSS data security requirements for information security.
- Automatic Software Upgrades - When you choose hosted apps like ours, you don’t need to worry about downloading and installing software upgrades or security patches. Your system will always be up-to-date. We stay on top of upgrades and security patches around the clock, so you’ll always be using the latest versions of all system software. And we partner with leaders in the security industry, to give you the strongest level of protection available.
- Data Access - With hosted apps like ours, you benefit from having a wide range of data access options. This flexibility helps your employees to be more productive, compared to employees who are limited to using only a specific computer or specific software. Location is no longer an issue. You can access and manage data from any Internet-connected computer or mobile device. And your data transmissions are secured, to avoid any possibility of data leakage.
- Federal Regulations & Compliance – We stay on top of the regulations so you don’t have to. We provide the storage, compliance, and retrieval features needed for audits, legal requests, and other business needs. Our optional archiving service is designed to meet e-discovery, regulatory, and industry guidelines for data retention, and is ideal even for companies that need to adhere to the highest levels of compliance.
New Plethware Email Password Security Measures
To ensure that all of our users have the best security possible, we are changing the password requirements for our business class email solutions from Pleth. While we are not forcing everyone to update their passwords immediately, we are encouraging our users to update their passwords for better security. If you’d like to change your credentials now you can, simply login to www.plethware.com, click settings, click change password…
As of September 26th, 2009, all of our users will be held to the following standards when changing their passwords: (Passwords cannot contain:)
- Less than 6 characters.
- 3 or more consecutive numerals (e.g. 567, 9876).
- The word "password".
- The mailbox user name.
- The mailbox domain name.
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- If you are still managing your email in-house and fighting the battle day to day, and all of the frustrations that go along with managing email, users, security, etc., take a look at our email outsourcing solutions…
Rackspace Handled the Outage Well (IMO)
I should probably state for the record that I might be a little bias on this one because I currently serve as a member of the Client Advisory Board at Rackspace and provide feedback on various aspects of their hosted email applications. But, as I am sure a lot of you realized today, there was a disturbance in the force. Rackspace experienced an outage today and as a result, a lot of websites and email accounts experienced downtime. While Pleth doesn’t host any websites at Rackspace, but we do however house some of our clients email solutions there.
Usually when there is a major NOC failure like this I like to find a nice tight hole and crawl into it, fortunately these situations rarely happen. When they do it’s a helpless feeling for those of us whose connectivity is affected by it. Normally we immediately call into our datacenter to see what news we can get, only to find that the call center is experiencing a severe meltdown thanks to the high call volume of resellers calling in to report the obvious. At the end of the day all we want to know is the same thing, what is the ETA for everything being back online? Well, thanks to Twitter, that’s all changed…
Today Rackspace did a great job getting updates out to their customers via Twitter, and I wanted to commend Cameron Nouri, the Rackspace Apps Evangelist who manages the @RackApps for doing an excellent job keeping us updated. I know it sounds weird to give a company Kudos on a day that they experienced an outage, but let’s face it, these things are going to happen. When these things do happen, keeping clients informed should be one of the top priorities for a provider in my opinion…
I know that there are going to be thousands of people out there that were affected that aren’t as calm about the outage as I am, and I promise I understand where you are coming from. I just wanted to point out how well they did on keeping us all in the loop.
Also, here’s a list of system status updates from the outage…
