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Should I migrate from Eudora to Outlook?

I'm just starting to get a handle on GTD, having read the book, wrangled my inboxes (mostly--an ongoing war), got the labeler, filing & filing, even managed my first mindsweep before going on vacation last week. This has been over the course of six months, truth be told.

A coworker recommended that I move to Outlook instead of Eudora for work email. The primary reasons are more robust searching (via Google Desktop) and its Tasks feature. I've been a lifelong Eudora user (15 years!), but have dabbled with other email apps over the years, including Outlook Express for some time, and I currently use Gmail for my personal email. I'm also a longtime Palm user, and with GTD I've started using its Tasks app for my Next Actions and Projects (in addition to Memos, similar to the PigPog method).

Despite my years and familiarity with these tools, I'm not really satisfied with Palm Desktop's Tasks application, or Eudora's search engine. So, I'm tempted by the thought of moving to the widely used Outlook to address both concerns.

(Eudora is the "official" email app at my large workplace, but there is a large population of Outlook users, too, and IT will support it. As much as I love Gmail, I don't think migrating my work email to that system is a good idea.)

One complication may be the size of my email archives. They go back almost ten years at this employer, and are nearly 10Gb. Four-fifths of that is the attachment folder, many of which I probably don't need anymore, but it's not worth the time to sort through that. I much prefer the dump-it-all-into-the-archive method for email management. Besides, I occasionally find something old & discarded that I'm glad is still around.

Last night I read online that this migration can be done by importing into Outlook Express first, then from that into Outlook (2003). That's a big step, and I'm just feeling around for advice on the subject.

Thanks.

-MJ

TOPICS: Windows

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