I have a badly messed up mailbox. When I open many messages, what shows
up has nothing to do with the subject line that I clicked on. I've tried deleting the .toc file and having Eudora recreate it, which has fixed
some problems in the past, to no avail. I've also tried messing around
with a copy using Word and TextEdit, which has also fixed some problem
in the past, but now I'm getting an error saying "Selection is not a
properly formated mailbox," Any ideas?

I suspect this has been discussed in the past. If so, a pointer to the
thread will be fine.

Thanks.

Charlie
--
Nobody in this country got rich on his own. You built a factory--good.
But you moved your goods on roads we all paid for. You hired workers we
all paid to educate. So keep a big hunk of the money from your factory.
But take a hunk and pay it forward. Elizabeth Warren (paraphrased)

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In article <1mobk8m.s4cda8wv3wtxN%csampson@inetworld.net>, Charles H.
Sampson <csampson@inetworld.net> wrote:

I have a badly messed up mailbox. When I open many messages, what shows
up has nothing to do with the subject line that I clicked on. I've tried >deleting the .toc file and having Eudora recreate it, which has fixed
some problems in the past, to no avail. I've also tried messing around
with a copy using Word and TextEdit, which has also fixed some problem
in the past, but now I'm getting an error saying "Selection is not a
properly formated mailbox," Any ideas?

I hope you made a copy of the mailbox before trying to "fix" it.

And for fucks sake, do NOT use a word processor to try to fix a text
file. Use a text editor such as TextWrangler (which is free).

--
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious
and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." -- James Nicoll, rasfw

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Tim Streater <timstreater@greenbee.net> wrote:

In article <1mobk8m.s4cda8wv3wtxN%csampson@inetworld.net>, Charles H.
Sampson <csampson@inetworld.net> wrote:

I have a badly messed up mailbox. When I open many messages, what shows
up has nothing to do with the subject line that I clicked on. I've tried >deleting the .toc file and having Eudora recreate it, which has fixed
some problems in the past, to no avail. I've also tried messing around
with a copy using Word and TextEdit, which has also fixed some problem
in the past, but now I'm getting an error saying "Selection is not a >properly formated mailbox," Any ideas?

I hope you made a copy of the mailbox before trying to "fix" it.

Notice the word "copy" above.

And for fucks sake, do NOT use a word processor to try to fix a text
file. Use a text editor such as TextWrangler (which is free).

I'll certainly look into TextWrangler, since you and another have both suggested it. Thanks. I don't know what the problem is with using a word processor, as long as you're sure that your final result is plain text.
I've successfully used Word in the past. That's why I'm puzzled about
the error message I'm now getting (above). I get it using both Word and TextEdit.

Charlie
--
Nobody in this country got rich on his own. You built a factory--good.
But you moved your goods on roads we all paid for. You hired workers we
all paid to educate. So keep a big hunk of the money from your factory.
But take a hunk and pay it forward. Elizabeth Warren (paraphrased)

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* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

In article <1mobk8m.s4cda8wv3wtxN%csampson@inetworld.net>,
csampson@inetworld.net (Charles H. Sampson) wrote:

I have a badly messed up mailbox. When I open many messages, what shows
up has nothing to do with the subject line that I clicked on. I've tried deleting the .toc file and having Eudora recreate it, which has fixed
some problems in the past, to no avail. I've also tried messing around
with a copy using Word and TextEdit, which has also fixed some problem
in the past, but now I'm getting an error saying "Selection is not a
properly formated mailbox," Any ideas?

I suspect this has been discussed in the past. If so, a pointer to the
thread will be fine.

Dredging up memories from the past......

Do you have Eudora set to use separate TOC files or is it using resource
fork for the TOC? I have a recollection at one stage we were advised to
use one or the other for some reason.

As for the error, unless you are careful, you can end up with a Word
document rather than a text document, and needless to say, Eudora has a
few problems with that. If you want to edit Eudora mailboxes, try using TextWrangler, a free text-only editor.

Cheers

David

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Charles H. Sampson <csampson@inetworld.net> wrote:

I have a badly messed up mailbox. When I open many messages, what shows
up has nothing to do with the subject line that I clicked on. I've tried deleting the .toc file and having Eudora recreate it, which has fixed
some problems in the past, to no avail. I've also tried messing around
with a copy using Word and TextEdit, which has also fixed some problem
in the past, but now I'm getting an error saying "Selection is not a
properly formated mailbox," Any ideas?

As David Morrison and Tim Streater have suggested, I strongly recommend TextWrangler for editing the copy. It's free and very good.

Editing the copy to fix the problem will probably work, but it may be
really tedious. Open both the copy of the damaged mailbox and a copy of
a good mailbox. Pay close attention to the formatting of the various
lines in the good mailbox and fix lines in the damaged mailbox to match.

IIRC, from my experience when I had the same problem, not all messages
were a problem but just the messages after some particular mangled
message. From within Eudora, start at the beginning of the mailbox and
check to find which is the first message where subject and body don't
match. That will give you your starting point to work from. It might
be that fixing one problem message will also correct the problem for all subsequent messages; it's been so long since I've had a machine that
would run Eudora that I just don't remember.

I suspect this has been discussed in the past. If so, a pointer to the
thread will be fine.

It has been, but I couldn't find the thread.

--
Kathy

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In article <1mocml3.s9qxts9wqzknN%csampson@inetworld.net>,
csampson@inetworld.net (Charles H. Sampson) wrote:

I'll certainly look into TextWrangler, since you and another have both suggested it. Thanks. I don't know what the problem is with using a word processor, as long as you're sure that your final result is plain text.
I've successfully used Word in the past. That's why I'm puzzled about
the error message I'm now getting (above). I get it using both Word and TextEdit.

Just guessing, but Eudora might expect a Carriage Return character at
the end of each line as was used in the original Mac OS. OS X changed
this to use a Line Feed character to mark the end of each line. It is
possible that Word writes out the file with Line Feed characters instead
of the original Carriage Returns. Textwrangler preserves the end of
line characters.

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