Technical Instructions for any of the following:

1. You want to keep your Eudora mail in a separate folder or on a separate drive, e.g. because your C: drive is too full, or because you want your mail to be in a folder together with your other data files, separate from the programs. -->
2. You have multiple people using the same computer and each of them should have their own private mail area, or you have multiple POP accounts that you wish to keep separate. -->
3. You need to move your existing Eudora mail to another computer, or into a new mail folder. -->
4. You want to back up your mail to a CD-ROM. -->
5. You want to really take control of your Eudora application. -->
6. You want to learn more about the power of Eudora -->

So how is it done?

A: Creating a separate mail folder

A.1: Let's assume you want to keep your mail in D:\mail. Create that folder.
A.2: On the desktop, right-click the mouse and choose "New > Shortcut". Browse to your Eudora application, e.g. at "C:\Program Files\Eudora\Eudora.exe". Name the shortcut, e.g. "My Mail".
A.3: Right-click the shortcut and choose "Properties". On the "Target" line, after the program itself, add the name of the new mail folder, separated by a space. In our example, the line would now read: "C:\Program Files\Eudora\Eudora.exe" D:\mail (Note that the path needs to be enclosed in double quotes if it contains spaces.)
A.4: When you now double-click the new shortcut, Eudora will launch with mail found in your D:\mail folder, and will create all other needed items inside that folder automatically, e.g. a "Signatures" folder, the addressbook "nndbase.txt", and many other files. If you already had mail elsewhere on this machine, you should move it into the new mail folder as described under item C (while Eudora is not running!).
A.5: Tip for packrats that keep all their old mail: you could set up another such separate mail folder for really old stuff that you want to archive to CD and only ever access for searching/reference (i.e. that you will treat as read-only). You could even make one of these every year or so...when you're ready to start a new archive, simply move all the mailboxes (and folders of mailboxes) to be archived from the active mail folder to this archive mail folder (see item C for more details, specifically C.4-C.6).

B: Multiple mail users on one system

B.1: Create a separate mail folder and shortcut as described under item A for *each* user or each separate POP account. Make sure to give the shortcuts descriptive names, such as "Joe's mail". Done!
B.2: Privacy can only be enforced on Windows NT, 2000, or XP, or on MacOS X. The users' mail folders should be in their %HOME% or Application Data folder, should be owned by them, and should grant no access at all to the "Users" group. Note that administrators will always be able to access them anyway, and on XP by default everyone is an administrator, unless you change that. On Windows 2000/XP, recent versions of Eudora (5.2+) will keep a user's mail in the user's Application Data folder by default (when done as fresh install, not as an upgrade), so unless you prefer a different location, no special work needs to be done anymore.
B.3: Note that it is not necessary to set up distinct mail folders for your own various accounts with different ISPs, unless you use POP with more than one of them and want to keep their incoming mail separate (you could also simply use filters for that purpose). With IMAP, your mail stays on the mail server, and you will have a distinct set of mailboxes per account to manage it.

C: Moving existing mail to a new mail folder

C.1: Let's assume you want to move your Eudora mail from the current Eudora program folder into D:\mail. Before doing anything else, launch Eudora and choose "Special > Compact Mailboxes". This will actually delete messages marked for deletion and make your mailboxes smaller. Now close Eudora!
C.2: First, let's make sure you are seeing file extensions (by default, these are hidden in Windows): open "Start > Programs > Accessories > Windows Explorer" and click on "View > Folder Options" or "Tools > Folder Options" (depending on your version of Windows). Go to the "View" tab, and find the checkbox for "Hide file extensions for known file types". Uncheck that box, then click "OK". (You may want to look through these options some more, there are various useful items here.)
C.3: Navigate in Windows Explorer to your Eudora program folder, e.g. "C:\Program Files\Eudora". From the "View" menu, select the "Details" view. Click once on the column label "Type" to sort by filetype.
C.4: Hold down the Ctrl key and click on all files with the ".mbx" extension to select all top-level mailboxes. Move them to D:\mail. The easiest way to do this is to drag them with the right mouse button to the D:\mail folder in the left column, then select "Move" when prompted.
C.5: Do the same for all files with the ".toc" extension. These are the tables of contents for the mailboxes, where Eudora keeps track of which messages are read, deleted, replied to, etc. (If you compacted your mailboxes under C.1, you don't really need these, as they will be re-built when you launch Eudora. But without them you will lose info about the read/replied status.)
C.6: Now move all folders with the ".fol" extension to D:\mail. These are folders of mailboxes. (You may not have any.)
C.7: There are various other items to move, some of which you may not actually be using:

• eudora.ini - all options and account information (Eudora's most crucial file, keep a copy of it!)
• nndbase.txt - the main addressbook
• rcpdbase.txt - the quick recipient list
• filters.pce - Eudora's mail filters
• history.lst - the list of recently used addresses
• descmap.pce - where Eudora keeps track of your mailbox list, not crucial
• lmos.dat - if you are using the POP protocol, list of what messages you have already downloaded
• Imap - if you are using the IMAP protocol, local copies of remote mailboxes and attach folders
• Attach - the attachments folder (you may have specified a different one in Eudora's options)
• Nickname - a folder of secondary addressbooks (.txt and .toc files)
• Signatures - a folder of text files with your various signatures
• Stationery - a folder of message templates you have made

C.8: Before you launch Eudora to test your newly moved mail, be sure to rename your in.mbx, in.toc, out.mbx, out.toc, trash.mbx, trash.toc files (e.g. add "_old" before the dot) to distinguish your old mail from any new mail. The reason for this is that Eudora always keeps these three mailboxes in memory, and if they are large (more than a few hundred messages in any of them) you risk frequent crashes and bad performance. It is highly recommended to organize your mail into folders of (smallish) mailboxes via simple drag and drop.

D: Backing up your mail

D.1: To back up your mail, it is sufficient to back up all the files described under item C. You can then at any time install Eudora, drop these files in place, and be back up and running. There is no point in backing up the Eudora program files, as the program needs to be *installed* anyway, and the company is likely to have a new version out by then. However you should make a point of frequently backing up the Eudora.ini file, which holds your program settings (preferences and account info) and keeping multiple versions handy, especially if you like experimenting with settings.
D.2: It is easiest to back up all relevant files when you have set up a separate mail folder as described under item A and moved your mail there as outlined under item C. You can then simply copy the entire D:\mail folder to a CD-ROM, or ZIP disk, or similar. Be sure to include the attachments folder, which may have been set in Eudora's options to be somewhere else.
D.3: When restoring mail from such a backup, first check that you won't overwrite existing files. If you have a new computer and have already read some mail on it, and now you want to restore your mail from an older computer that you have backed up (say to CD-ROM), you should first rename your In, Out, and Trash mailboxes and anything else you might already have created on the new machine. Or restore the backup to a different folder and make two mail shortcuts (see item A) for complete separation of the two sets of mail.
D.4: Note that a mail folder or specific mailboxes restored from CD will have the read-only attribute set (as do all files copied from a CD), which needs to be cleared before they can be used properly by Eudora. Select these files or the entire mail folder, right-click and choose "Properties", then uncheck the "read-only" checkbox and click "OK".

E: Taking control of Eudora

E.1: Eudora stores its settings in Eudora.ini, a plain text file in your mail folder. (Actually, you can also specify a different INI file after the mail folder in the starting shortcut's "Target" command line, or in the Run box, e.g. for quickly testing out another one). You can examine this file with Notepad or any text editor, and can hand-enter settings there if you know what you're doing. Careful!!!
E.2: When the INI file has gotten corrupt for whatever reason, you can quickly reset most things to defaults: hold Ctrl-Shift down and click "Tools > Options". You will see a dialog offering to strip all but the most basic settings (i.e. your account data) from Eudora.ini (while saving your current INI file as Eudini.sav).
E.3: The more drastic option: before starting Eudora, rename Eudora.ini to create an entirely new settings file, unregistered and without any personal info.
E.4: There is a plugin that allows you to set some more esoteric settings via "Tools > Options", called esoteric.epi. It is located in the Eudora program folder, under Extrastuff. Copy it into the Eudora program folder itself, then start Eudora to play with these (bottom of the options list).
E.5: The Eudora website (especially the knowledgebase) is full of tips for individual settings that can be made in the INI file (there is even a full list of these for Mac users with explanations, very different from what can be done under Windows). The ideal method for setting such options is not to hand-edit the INI file, but to create a special message that you will never send to anyone (e.g. a message stationery), with subject "Special Eudora settings" or so, into which you type or paste tags and explanations like the following: