Backup Email and Bookmarks/Favourites in OS X

Posted : 5 Aug 03

As you may or may not recall I sent an email out late last year with details on how to backup your email and Internet preferences/bookmarks. However this was only for OS 9. Quite a few people have been asking how to do the same for OS X.
Also good to see that my recent email on backup disasters has had some effect. After this email (and last years) you will be able to backup your mail and bookmarks/favourites too.

The first thing to understand is that OS X is a user centric OS. Even if you don't explicitly log-in as anyone OS X automatically logs you in as a specific user anyway. In the case where you log-in at startup you will know what your username is.
If you don't know your username then goto :

Apple Menu/System Preferences/Accounts and click through the users until you see the one marked as log in automatically. If no user is marked for auto login then you will be logging in manually with every restart. The username you are using for log in here is the info you want.

Virtually all of your user data related to you is stored in :

Mac HD/Users/username
- where Mac HD is the name of your hard disk and username is your OS X log-in name

You can manually store data anywhere but unless you have a good reason to do otherwise it is best to leave it where OS X puts it. Otherwise strange things may happen...

Email
There are 2 basic ways that email programs organise their storage of email data. The first is by database and the 2nd is to not use a database. My preference is to not have a single inclusive file with all my mail in it as with the volume of email going around this rapidly becomes a very large file that gets hard to backup. MS Entourage uses this method. MS has a strong history of using proprietary formats and not hooking into built-in Apple software. Most times this is a bad thing. I don't have many people using Netscape/Mozilla for email but this can be a good solution for those who want to integrate their web browser with their email.

Entourage : Mac HD/Users/username/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office X Identities/Main Identity
Eudora : Mac HD/Users/username/Documents/Eudora Folder
Mail : Mac HD/Users/username/Library/Mail
Netscape/Mozilla : Mac HD/Users/username/Library/Mozilla/Profiles/default/2jshdmft.slt/

Where to Download the latest Email client :
Eudora 5.2.1: http://www.eudora.com/download/
MS Office demo : http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/officex/using.aspx?pid=usingofficex&type=howto&article=/mac/officex/otd_download.xml
Mail : included as part of OS X (best to be using the upgraded version that comes with OS X 10.2)
Mozilla 1.4 : http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/releases/mozilla1.4/mozilla-mac-MachO-1.4.dmg.gz
Netscape 7.1 : http://wsidecar.apple.com/cgi-bin/nph-reg3rdpty1.pl/product=01642&platform=osx&method=sa//Netscape-MachO.dmg.gz

Note that Eudora email files in particular can be stored anywhere. If you make an alias of the Eudora Settings file then you can click on this to open Eudora anywhere (if you move the Eudora Folder). This is good if you want to have multiple users and keep all of their mail completely separate. There are ways of getting Netscape/Mozilla to access data anywhere like Eudora but it it is relatively easy to confuse Netscape's Profile Manager so I don't recommend fiddling here. Now if only Eudora had a good address book....

As MS in OS X don't have a free email client, they have now allowed Entourage to be purchased separately (for around AUS$295 inc GST). Previously you had to buy MS Office to have a MS email client. As of the latest 10.1.4 Office update Entourage supports connection to Outlook Exchange mail servers. Entourage in OS X is the only way to update your OS 9 Entourage or Outlook Express files to run natively. Quite a few different keyboard short cuts from Entourage in OS 9.

My spin on the big 4 email clients :

1) Eudora. My personal preference of email client. Allows very flexible account management of multiple users account. Good filtering especially for junk mail. All mail and attachments are stored in separate folders (a good thing). Needs a better address book. But basically this is the standard to beat. It doesn't try to be all things to all people. Simply a good, full featured email client. Upgrading from OS 9 is particularly easy just copy your mail folder from where it was (see my previous article) to where OS X requires it (see above).

2) MS Entourage. All the bells and whistles here. Excellent integration of the components. Limited to 1 all encompassing window which I find a bit restricting after using Eudora. It also has an excellent address book. MS have a very poor record with security (and it's getting worse). Many of the updates and patches for their products are simply because of security concerns.

3) A good basic email client with minimal setup required. Lacking in a lot of the extras though. Has an built-in intelligent spam filter. It sort of works. Best to wait for version 2, supposedly coming with Mac OS X 10.3.

4) Netscape/Mozilla. Excellent if you want to have all your Internet stuff within 1 package, but it is harder to manage multiple users and there are too many limitations on the email side of things for me to recommend it. More sophisticated than Apple mail though. Although I haven't had a really good examination of the latest Mozilla 1.5 beta yet. This might improve things on the email side. Perhaps a review for the future...

Note that there are many other email clients out there. Of note is that Palm have their excellent (and free) Palm Desktop software. Those looking for an alternative to Entourage need look no further. This is not an email client but a great little contact manager program. Get it here :

http://www.palm.com/us/software/desktop/mac.html

For those of you using a Palm Pilot then you are most likely already aware of how good this software is. My personal solution is to use Eudora for mail and Palm Desktop for contacts (along with Filemaker Pro) and diary.

Web
Many people never backup their bookmarks/favourites. With the amount of effort that many put into organising them I certainly recommend that you back up this often neglected data. MS has just recently announced that Internet Explorer for Mac will never reach version 6. They will continue to release minor updates and security patches for Explorer 5. ... As AOL recently disbanded their Netscape development team and are adopting Explorer as their web browser of choice it looks like it is time to download Safari or Mozilla.

Safari bookmarks: Mac HD/Users/username/Library/Safari/Boomarks.plist
Explorer favorites : Mac HD/Users/username/Library/Preference/Explorer/Favorites.html
Netscape/Mozilla bookmarks : Mac HD/Users/username/Library/Mozilla/Profiles/default/2jshdmft.slt/bookmarks.html
- if more than 1 user in Netscape or Mozilla then there may be some other folders in the same folder as default. The "2jshdmft.slt" is just some random name that they allocate. Yours will be different.

Where to download the latest OS X Web Browser :

Safari 1.0 : http://www.apple.com.au/safari/download/
Internet Explorer 5.2.3 : http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.aspx#IE
Mozilla 1.4 : http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/releases/mozilla1.4/mozilla-mac-MachO-1.4.dmg.gz
Netscape 7.1 : http://wsidecar.apple.com/cgi-bin/nph-reg3rdpty1.pl/product=01642&platform=osx&method=sa//Netscape-MachO.dmg.gz

You may wish to download for the Mozilla 1.5a beta. Seems to work well. Hard to go past Safari though.

And have you backed up your data recently? Just checking...