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EML versus PST in e-mail programs
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Posted by Steve
Aug 5, 2011 at 11:14 AM
Franz Grieser wrote:
>Hi Graham
>
>>- does using thousands of separate .eml files (one for each
>>e-mail)
>make a program using them faster or slower than a program (i.e. Outlook) using
>>a
>single (large) .pst file?
>
>That depends on the implementation.
>
>>- what are the
>security implications of using .eml files?
>>I.e. I imagine that if my computer was
>hacked into people could open the .pst file or the
>>.eml files to read their contents,
>but my gut feeling is that the .pst file is better
>>protected. Is that a correct
>assumption?
>
>Sorry: No. Data in a PST file is not encrypted. It’s not plain text
>either. But you can easily get software that opens PST files and lets you read or
>extract data.
>
>From a security point of view, however, I’d find a collection of
>thousands of files (1 per email) preferable to one single file containing all your
>data (emails, tasks, contacts, ...). If the PST file gets corrupted, you may lose all
>the data in it, if one EML file gets corrupted, you lose that one email. There are,
>however, 3 or 4 excellent rescue tools that can be used to repair PST files or extract
>data.
>
>Franz
There is a very active user forum for Intellect that has plenty of suggestions on archiving the data - email in particular. The one way I have chosen is to use the “Archive” function from within Intellect. Essentially you move the data you want to archive to a different folder - and a different user name within Intellect. Once done you can “throw” data there for archival purposes. It works for me, but there are issues to consider beforehand.
Steve
Posted by Graham Rhind
Aug 5, 2011 at 12:32 PM
Steve wrote:
>Graham, you hit on
>one example of an “issue” that has lead me to use a unique feature of Intellect - the task
>“series.” There are appointment “series,” e-mail “series,” etc. Check those
>out.
Ah, now that’s interesting. I have a need to have a system that lists various tasks which I need to do every time something happens (such as a new country comes into being, or a postal code system changes). Currently I do that in a custom-written Visual Foxpro program, but I can see that working equally well in Intellect (except that I’d prefer the tasks to be undated, but I suppose it’s just a matter of working around the inbuilt system)
>I can tell you that having thousands of eml files
>spread amoung numerous subdirectories does not slow Intellect down.
Thanks. I notice that Intellect reads .msg files as well, which are native Outlook files, so that might be a useful way to go as .msg files can be easily created out of .pst files just by dragging and dropping from Outlook.
Graham
Posted by Graham Rhind
Aug 5, 2011 at 12:37 PM
By the way, the reason why I believe(d) that .pst files are more secure is that on my system (Windows 7 64-bit) Windows will stop any program which tries to read that file except Outlook and request authorisation from the user; the file is not automatically associated with Outlook so double clicking on it won’t open Outlook; and its contents aren’t searchable by desktop search engines.
Graham
Posted by Graham Rhind
Aug 5, 2011 at 02:06 PM
Graham Rhind wrote:
>Thanks. I notice that Intellect reads .msg files as well,
Correction: Intellect can NOT read .msg files.
Graham
Posted by Chris Murtland
Aug 5, 2011 at 03:52 PM
Graham,
You might want to take a look at Aid4Mail at http://www.aid4mail.com/
I have used it mostly for conversions, so I haven’t really tried any of the archiving functions. It can archive to zip files (and other formats) directly from pst files (even those not currently open in Outlook), so it might be worth a look.
Chris