Search issues with Eudora Email Client
Back in the day, when the dinosaurs roamed the earth, lots of people used Eudora as their email client. This was before Microsoft had bundled Outlook Express with Windows.
Fast forward a few years.
Version 7 of Eudora shipped with something they called Fast (Indexed) Search. A way to search through your email boxes very fast. Hence the name.
Using the very latest version, 7.1.0.9, I had a client who had run into 2 issues with the search feature.
1. Although it would search, the results sometimes included emails but did not list the mailbox or folder that they were living in. That field was blank.
2. Also some emails were showing up twice in the search results. Same identical email, same headers, same time… double clicking on either one would open the email, and they were exactly the same. I suspect that there was only 1 email, just for some weird reason 2 references to it.
The second issue happened first. The customer noticed it, told me about it, and moved on with life. It was annoying, but didn’t really slow them down. Then this week the 1st issue cropped up. This one was more of a show stopper, as they needed the mailbox/folder to be visible to see if the email(s) was/were the one(s) they were searching for.
I took a backup of their email directory. I was able to recreate both of the issues at my office.
Some google searches later I had tried the following :
1. In Eudora, Tools – Options – Find Messages : Index Now and Re-Index Mail. Both had no visible outcome. The searches still didn’t work correctly.
2. Delete the Search directory under the Eudora directory. In theory this should force Eudora to recreate the search index. Still no go.
After a couple of hours I discovered a reference on a google group that pointed me to an issue with the x1 search. This Search, which is responsible for the Indexed search in Eudora is apparently provided by another company. The file to make it work is named x1lib.dll, This file should live in the Eudora directory. I checked and discovered that my copy of Eudora did not include this file. Neither did the customers.
Some more google searches later I managed to track down a copy of this file. I installed it. Back now to Tools – Options – Find Messages, This time both Index Now and Re-Index Email actually do something.
Final result : Search results are now fast. And actually contain all the information required. Without any annoying omissions or double ups.
Happy Customer.
Happy Me.
To help anyone who has issues the search in Eudora 7.1.0.9 here is a link to the required x1lib.dll. This file should be installed into the root Eudora directory. This file should be extracted into the root Eudora directory.