by , 3:05 PM EDT, April 14th, 2008

Tonya Engst at Tidbits.com decided it was finally time to make the switch from Eudora to Apple Mail. She told the story of what happened and what she learned along the way on Sunday.

"After months of hemming and hawing, I recently took the plunge and switched from Eudora to Apple Mail," Ms. Engst wrote. "... Based on plaintive email I'm receiving, it seems that many people are reluctantly contemplating a switch away from Eudora to an email client that's more actively supported or that has a more modern interface."

However, the author and editor learned that some preparation work is vital, and one shouldn't just jump in, export Eudora mail and expect everything to work perfectly. Getting organized first within Eudora is vital. Ms. Engst advised users to use Eudora Mailbox Cleaner rather than Apple Mail to import. Then one should study the differences in some key areas, like filters, to understand how the two apps compare.

"What I know now, after a week of using Mail, is that some of my initial troubles with filing related to my overall mousing speed and my lack of having scheduled enough time to settle into Mail," Ms. Engst noted. "For example, it took me a few days to realize that, when dragging a message out of the viewing pane and into a different mailbox to file it manually, I was dragging downward too much and not enough to the left toward the sidebar. Dragging more slowly and making an effort to drag to the left helped enormously. If you drag down too quickly, Mail thinks you want to select multiple messages in the viewing pane."

No major migration is painless, but knowing what to expect based on the experience of others can be very helpful. Ms. Engst covered a lot of that ground in her story.