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In starting up my new job at Tom's and
leaving CMP, I have had to go through the painful transition of moving from one
work laptop to another. It was painful not through any acts of omission on my
own, but just because I had to switch email and contacts out of Lotus Notes and
onto a more, ahem, open and politically correct platform. Thankfully, my new
job is in a Notes-free zone.
When I came back to CMP in 2002 (I had
first worked there in the early 1990s, if you must know, and some of you even
remember), I did a very foolish thing: I took the whole corporate mantra of
Notes seriously enough that I spent the better part of a day importing all my
thousands of contacts into a Notes address book. At the time I was using Outlook,
and CMP was Outlook-free because of fear of airborne Address Book exploits and
infections, uncertainty of future Microsoft compatibility, and doubt that it
was a truly better program than Notes. So I figured, why make waves the first
week on my job and just go along and befriend my IT support person and convert
into the Notes canon. I regretted it immediately, but learned to love ö- or at
least tolerate -- the quirky Notes address book. At least I didn't have to run
any additional software with my primary email program. Of course, running Notes
on Mac OS wasn't a picnic, and it didn't help matters that CMP didn't have a
more recent Webmail client for Notes so the only way
I could access my contacts was by toting around my laptop. But let's not get
into that right now.
As a side note, when I switched
laptops last summer from Mac to Windows (still using Notes), I discovered that
only a small portion of my thousands of contact records were being replicated
by Notes on CMP's servers. Luckily, I had backed up
my data on CD just in case this situation should ever happen. I still don't
know why Notes wasn't replicating all of my data ö after all, isn't that one of
the few things that Notes is known for? Anyway, I wasn't going to keep using
Notes and moving jobs presented this huge opportunity to convert from Notes to
something else. I just had to figure out what that something else would be.
My contacts have been through many
different iterations over the years. My first love was a program called Dynodex on the Mac (those of you who are fans and find this
reference over the Internet, don't call me, contact Brian Smiga
at brian@preclick.com and bug him about resurrecting your data) ö it was fast,
fun, and just enough fields to keep me happy with inputting data without being
the overwhelming life-force that an ACT or a Goldmine can be. After Dynodex, I dabbled with an xBase
clone from Lotus that my ISP had set up so I could access my contacts from a
Web query form or from my Web-enabled cell phone. I was ahead of the curve on
that one. Before Outlook became that infectious snake-pit, it was fairly decent
for keeping track of contacts too. But now I have the open-source religion and
wanted something more portable.
First, I had to rescue my data and
that required some special software. I settled on Transcend Migrator
for about $50. It copied my Notes email folders into IMAP folders and moved
them to my mail server, and it converted my huge Notes address book into an
LDIF file of several megabytes. Now at least I had choices. By the way, those
of you that go to transcend.com's site will need some
patience and have to put on your secret decoder rings to try to navigate toward
the eventual purchase of this worthwhile utility.
I knew that I wasn't going with any
Microsoft product. I feared infection, was uncertain of Microsoft
compatibility, and was doubtful that anything they could offer would be the
best solution. Geez, I was beginning to sound like
the CMP IT department ö had it been that long since I was working there? Scary. But seriously, I wanted something that I could use on
any system for the next several years. In between CMP and Tom's laptops, I was
going to be using my Mac for several weeks. After doing some tests, I could
import that LDIF file into the Mac Address Book applet that comes with the
system. What I didn't realize was that I couldn't export anything once the
addresses were imported.
Once I did the import, I realized that
I was going to have to clean up the data. Curiously, the converted address book
has about 200 CMP listings. Now, I probably don't know 200 CMPers,
and a quick glance through this list proved that the Transcend converter
somehow mysteriously added the CMP affiliation to these entries. Was this to
remind me of my previous employer or was it some other random act? Who knows. Since I couldn't export the addresses from the Mac, I
just let them be until I got my Windows laptop from Tom's.
So what am I running for my email and
contacts? I liked having a single program for both, and after looking around I
settled on Mozilla's Thunderbird. It took a bit of
twiddling, but eventually I have all my email accounts set up the way I like
them and all my RSS feeds that I want to read regularly and that monster
address book somewhat weeded out with all the CMP entries properly accounted
for.
You would think that there could be a
better way. Microsoft has an XP file and settings transfer wizard, but both
computers need to fit very specific criteria for this to work, and you need a
copy of XP or the XP CD handy as well. (I found out that a good way to transfer
contacts if you are going to use this wizard is to temporarily use the Windows
Address book, transfer the files, and then import them into Thunderbird and
quickly get rid of the Windows software and data before anyone tries to
compromise this from the Big Bad Internet. But that is for another time.)
Of course, once I was done with the
email, my real work began to keep track of my passwords, Web pages, and
bookmarks, as well as moving the rest of my data onto my laptop. But at least I
have access to my contacts now. This is probably too much information, but
those of you considering moving off of Notes or Outlook can take solace that
there are ways to get to a more open place. It just will take some time and
elbow grease.
Entire contents copyright 2005 by David Strom, Inc.
David Strom, david@strom.com, +1 (516) 554-6290
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