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How are you dealing with e-mails
Here is my conundrum. I have a boatload of email saved in the old desktop version of AOL. Several years ago I started using Outlook. I used a program that is supposed to export your AOL Personal Filing Cabinet to an Outlook file. I was able to transfer a large portion of them but all my folders and most of the sent emails did not make the transition.
I am slowly going through the ones that transferred and trying to get them into the correct folders. Currently, I still have the old AOL software on my computer so I can see the original order and search for items.
I am thinking about using copy and paste to put individual e-mails into notes in Zotero. Since these will be text I don't think they will take up much room in Zotero but am wondering if this is the best way to approach this? Another idea is to make PDF's or documents out of the emails and then link them in Zotero.
Any thoughts?
I'm wondering if there is a way to automate the import into Zotero for you. Does your AOL software give you any export options besides moving them to Outlook? Perhaps a text file option? It's possible we could reformat what is exported to an import-ready format and draw them into Zotero.
No, Aol doesn't have an export option. I did purchase a program that converted the PFC file to html. So now I have them in a folder full of html files. At least the file structure remained on the transfer. I know I can convert them to PDF's from the html. But I don't think I can do a bulk convert.
You might be able to make them Zotero-ready with Word macros. If it can bring them in a proper email citations, would you want that? If you want to send me three or four of the html files, I'd be happy to see if a macro would reformat them. What have you done about attachments?
Some of the attachments converted others were not found. But I think I still have most of them somewhere. At least the ones that matter. I am still trying to figure out which ones to keep and what is not needed. A number of them are between cousins in Germany and Austria. Some contain help in transcribing and translating. Those I would like to keep.
There is also a collection of emails that I wrote to family and friends when I spent 4 months in Europe researching back in 2007. One month researching in England, a weekend in Pairs, two months researching in Germany, Poland, Austria, a weekend in Belgium and another month researching in Scotland. Those are definitely keepers.
Do you know if there is a standard for archiving e-mails for genealogy? Print them put them in PDFs?
I don't know if it's a standard, but I always print mine to PDF.
A PDF seems to be the way to go as they do make it harder to change what was originally written. Especially if I am using it for part of a proof. That is the skeptical side of me talking.
Skeptical is good!
