ds

Hi,

I've searched for an answer to this & come up empty (although I have noticed
others in the same boat as me...)

Maybe there is a guru out there who can provide an answer....

I've got a LOT of "orphaned" attachments in my Eudora attachments directory,
i.e., attachments whose "email body" has already been deleted. Long story
how I got to this point...

(And yes -- in my Eudora options, I have Eudora set to delete attachments
when the email is deleted, which also doesn't seem to be working... I'd like
to get that working too...but one thing at a time....)

Anyways, does anyone have a procedure / script / program / tool / utility /
magic incantation to scan through and determine which files in the
attachments directory do NOT have a "parent" email anymore? All I need (all
I want, really) is a list of the files, I don't need the tool to
automatically delete the attachments without me first confirming they really
should be deleted.

There are over 3600 attachments in this directory, and about 24,000 emails
total (again, please don't ask how I got into this situation, let's just say
I inherited a problem that I'm trying to fix). Point being, the approach of
manually scanning emails and doing this by hand is just not an option due to
the size of the content.

Thanks a LOT to anyone who can help.

ds

peter

It's not exactly a one-click no-brainer, but here goes:

1. Open a copy of the relevant mailbox's mbx file in a text editor that
lets you replace based on regular expressions.

2. Put a special character, e.g. "§", in front of each line that starts
with "attachment converted". Eliminate all lines not starting with "§".
This will result in File#1, containing a list of all attachments that
still pertain to a mail message.

3. Get a file listing for your attachments directory, resulting in File#2.

4. In the text editor, append File#1 to File#2 to form File#3. (Make
sure that the paths to the individual files are identical.) Sort the
list. Replace line breaks with spaces. Remove duplicates via replace.
Put "del " at the start of the file. Convert it to DOS format if you
suspect any special characters might be contained in any of the file
paths. Save as "thingy.bat.

5. Run "thingy.bat".

If you need any further details, e.g. what sofware you could use, how
best to configure the regex replace action, or any other query, I'll be
glad to help.

--
Peter

ds

Peter -- I can see your reply on Google groups, but for some reason, not on
my newsreader. So I am replying to my own message instead of yours...

Anyways, just wanted to say "thanks", your explanation is very clear, I will
try it today.

Maybe if I come up with a good enough Perl script that is user friendly and
robust, I'll even post it somewhere for others to use.

Thanks again!