On Wednesday, August 4, 2021 at 8:24:27 PM UTC-7, Eric Stevens wrote:
> On Wed, 04 Aug 2021 15:32:14 +1000, nob...@here.invalid wrote:
> >On Wed, 04 Aug 2021 13:11:04 +1200, Eric Stevens <eric.s...@sum.co.nz> wrote:
> >
> >>On Wed, 04 Aug 2021 07:04:07 +1200, Ralph Fox <-rf-nz-@-.invalid>
> >>wrote:
> >>
> >>>On Tue, 03 Aug 2021 21:55:42 +1200, Eric Stevens wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> I am in the process of converting my email client to Thunderbird from
> >>>> Agent 8. I have followed the excellent advice of Arthur Conan Doyle in
> >>>> his post of 26 October 2020 (I had to do some exploring to sort out
> >>>> subfolders) but I am sticking on his advice to use 'Dawn' to convert
> >>>> the address book. It just doesn't seem to want to install on 64 bit
> >>>> Windows 10 build 19043.1110 (21H1).
> >>>>
> >>>> Does anyone know of a way to export the Agent address book in a form
> >>>> that will be digestable by Thunderbird.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> 1. Use Dawn (the Address Book manager) version 5.4 to export Agent's
> >>> address book in LDAP/*.LDIF or CSV format. Thunderbird can read
> >>> both LDAP/*.LDIF and CSV formats.
> >>
> >>Yes. I've tried that but for some reason it won't install. Hence my
> >>post.
> >
> >Try installing in comparability mode for windows xp.
>
> It won't even offer that possibility. The install just won't do
> anything.
> >
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> 2. You can find Dawn (the Address Book manager) here:
> >>>
> >>> <http://web.archive.org/web/20131030020722/http://mysite.verizon.net/zakharin/software/Dawn/>
> >>>
> >>> <https://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/E-mail/Mail-Utilities/Dawn.shtml>
> >>> <https://dawn.software.informer.com/5.4/>
> >>> <https://download.cnet.com/Dawn/3000-2367_4-13924.html>
> >>> <https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/dawn.html>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> 3. Dawn (the Address Book manager) needs a one-time configuration to
> >>> work with Agent, so it can find Agent's address book.
> >>> After installing Dawn, do this:
> >>> 3.1 Run "Dawn Classic" from the start menu.
> >>> 3.2 In Dawn, go to "Edit >> Preferences >> Program Preferences"
> >>> 3.3 Select "Forte Agent" in the left box under "The following will not appear".
> >>> 3.4 Click the button marked "->" to move Forte Agent to the right box
> >>> 3.5 An "Open" window will appear
> >>> 3.6 Navigate to your Agent database, select Agent's address book file "contact.xml"
> >>> and click "Open"
> >>> 3.7 Click "OK" on Dawn's "Preferences" window to save the configuration.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> 4. To export your Agent address book
> >>> 4.1 In Dawn, go to "File >> Open >> Open Address Book"
> >>> 4.2 Select "Forte Agent" from the list, and click 'Next'.
> >>> (If you don't see "Forte Agent" listed, you need to do step 3.)
> >>> 4.3 Go to "File >> Save >> Save as file..."
> >>> 4.4 Select your file format, which should be one of these two
> >>> for Thunderbird to import:
> >>> LDAP files *.ldif
> >>> Comma Separated Values *.csv
> --
>
> Regards,
>
> Eric Stevens
I have the same installation problem on Windows 10. Same file sizes, etc. Setup.exe asks permission, then displays a help dialog for Windows Installer.. The first time, clicking OK gets a message that the program may not have installed properly. On retry, it doesn't even do that.

Add/Remove Programs doesn't find Dawn.

Any suggestions? Any way to clean it out?

Once I realized Excel could read XML files, importing the Agent address book into Thunderbird was fiddly but painless. I claim no expertise but this worked for me:

1) In Agent, File > Export > Address Book -> XML gives an XML file.

2) Edit in Notepad++ (or any regex-capable editor)

3) The <folder>0000xxxx</folder> lines screw up the Excel spreadsheet, so remove them all:

Select Search / Replace
In search field enter "<folder>([A-Z0-9]*)</folder>\n"
Select Regular expression
Replace All, and repeat Replace All until no replacements are made.
Save as an XML file and exit.

(Alternative: I wanted to keep one folder for email addresses that had them, just in case I figure out a way to automatically create filters. To do that:

In search field enter "<email (.*\s*)<folder>([A-Z0-9]*)</folder>"
In replace field enter "<email folder="$2" $1 "
Select Regular expression
Replace All.

Then do step 3 to get rid of multiple folders.)

4) Open the XML file in Excel. (I have Excel 2016.)
It asks As an XML table - click OK
Excel will create a schema - OK.
Ignore the error "Some data was imported as text."

After a couple dozen lines of metadata, the rest should be one address record per line.

I deleted the metadata lines, deleted all the columns up to and including moddate, and sorted on type5 to group the email lists together. I moved the outgoing email lists to another worksheet and entered them by hand. Then I massaged the spreadsheet to get the stuff I wanted to import.