Returning to Fastmail....revisited

[jer39lms]

Hi,

I've held a fastmail account since 2002 or 2003. Until 2005 I used it as my primary email. Most recently I've been using an exchange server. On one hand, I like Fastmail's web interface much more. On the other hand, I have appreciated Microsoft exchange server's bulletproof real-time sync of calendar, email, and contacts between iOS native mail/calendar/contact apps and Microsoft Office. Every few years I have considered moving back to Fastmail and have posted similar emails (which much appreciation for the Fastmail Community's response!) And so here I am again.

I have a staff of 6 and so would consider signing up for a business account. I currently have an Enhanced account.

In preface to my questions, I know I get better success when I have several questions if I post them in multiple threads but I don't want to be annoying so I'm putting them all in one post - if any senior members or Fastmail staff can take a few minutes to respond, I would greatly appreciate it:

1. I have a very large outlook .ost file - almost 4 gig. How do I migrate the email so that the old email from my current exchange server is in the main inbox and not in a folder? Should I simply install fastmail in Outlook and then cut and paste the emails?

2. I entered caldav credentials in my iphone last night. It worked, but now my iphone has two calendars when what I really want to do is have one calendar with my current exchange data migrated over. And so I tried using the import feature in fastmail web interface - I putting it to my .ost file and it said uploading but it did not work. It is a large file - is there another way of importing my outlook calendar data? I'm not sure what I did wrong.

3. I entered carddav info into my iphone settings and it did not work. it times out and says "cannot connect using SSL. Do you want to trysetting up account without SSL?" and if I tap "continue" it says "carddav account verification failed" . What am I doing wrong?

4. Is there a way to search Calendar items, either in the web interface, in the fastmail iphone app, or in EMclient? If not, is this a planned feature and if so, when?

5. if you reply to an email using the Fastmail iphone app does the contact get saved for auto complete purposes?

6. if you reply to an email using Outlook does the contact get saved for auto complete inside fastmail web interface? How about with EM Mail?

7. Does caldav support real-time syncing so that additions can be made on the fly from the iPhone, web interface, or desktop client and will populate in all of these venues?

8. I understand that carddav is still in development and is not yet available for business accounts. My plan was to move over my exchange contacts to fastmail under my enhanced account and THEN to upgrade to business. When it is available, same question as #7, will carddav support real-time syncing so that additions can be made from anywhere?


Any help would be greatly appreciated - I know it will take a few minutes to respond - I really appreciate any help I can get.

Thanks!

Jeremy

[BritTim]

Some good quesions. This is my take:

Originally Posted by jer39lms

1. I have a very large outlook .ost file - almost 4 gig. How do I migrate the email so that the old email from my current exchange server is in the main inbox and not in a folder? Should I simply install fastmail in Outlook and then cut and paste the emails?

Cut and paste is really the simplest solution. Try to use an Internet connection with fast upload speed.

Originally Posted by jer39lms

2. I entered caldav credentials in my iphone last night. It worked, but now my iphone has two calendars when what I really want to do is have one calendar with my current exchange data migrated over. And so I tried using the import feature in fastmail web interface - I putting it to my .ost file and it said uploading but it did not work. It is a large file - is there another way of importing my outlook calendar data? I'm not sure what I did wrong.

Note sure. Did it produce an error message, time out or say it had completed OK but without the data actually making its way to Fastmail?

Originally Posted by jer39lms

3. I entered carddav info into my iphone settings and it did not work. it times out and says "cannot connect using SSL. Do you want to trysetting up account without SSL?" and if I tap "continue" it says "carddav account verification failed" . What am I doing wrong?

Have you signed up for the CardDAV beta? Had the Address Book conversion finished at the time you were trying?

Originally Posted by jer39lms

4. Is there a way to search Calendar items, either in the web interface, in the fastmail iphone app, or in EMclient? If not, is this a planned feature and if so, when?

See this thread

Originally Posted by jer39lms

5. if you reply to an email using the Fastmail iphone app does the contact get saved for auto complete purposes?

Sorry, but I cannot remember

Originally Posted by jer39lms

6. if you reply to an email using Outlook does the contact get saved for auto complete inside fastmail web interface? How about with EM Mail?

No ... this would be a nice enhancement to Personalities.

Originally Posted by jer39lms

7. Does caldav support real-time syncing so that additions can be made on the fly from the iPhone, web interface, or desktop client and will populate in all of these venues?

Syncing is periodic. Changes will eventually make their way to other devices, but not in real time.

Originally Posted by jer39lms

8. I understand that carddav is still in development and is not yet available for business accounts. My plan was to move over my exchange contacts to fastmail under my enhanced account and THEN to upgrade to business. When it is available, same question as #7, will carddav support real-time syncing so that additions can be made from anywhere?

Same answer, I believe.

If you can live with the way Calendar and Contacts are handled, I think a return to Fastmail makes sense. The infrastructure is excellent and still improving. I am now more optimistic about Fastmail's long term prospects than I have been in many years.

[jer39lms]

Quote:
Originally Posted by jer39lms View Post
1. I have a very large outlook .ost file - almost 4 gig. How do I migrate the email so that the old email from my current exchange server is in the main inbox and not in a folder? Should I simply install fastmail in Outlook and then cut and paste the emails?
Cut and paste is really the simplest solution. Try to use an Internet connection with fast upload speed.

Makes sense. thanks

Quote:
Originally Posted by jer39lms View Post
2. I entered caldav credentials in my iphone last night. It worked, but now my iphone has two calendars when what I really want to do is have one calendar with my current exchange data migrated over. And so I tried using the import feature in fastmail web interface - I putting it to my .ost file and it said uploading but it did not work. It is a large file - is there another way of importing my outlook calendar data? I'm not sure what I did wrong.
Note sure. Did it produce an error message, time out or say it had completed OK but without the data actually making its way to Fastmail?

Nope - no error message. It didn't time out or say anything. it just said "uploading". Not sure what to do at this point..

Quote:
Originally Posted by jer39lms View Post
3. I entered carddav info into my iphone settings and it did not work. it times out and says "cannot connect using SSL. Do you want to trysetting up account without SSL?" and if I tap "continue" it says "carddav account verification failed" . What am I doing wrong?


Have you signed up for the CardDAV beta? Had the Address Book conversion finished at the time you were trying?

Ok so I had not signed up. Now I have, Now it went through, but for some reason no contacts are syncing between FM web interface and my iPhone. I tried entering new data in both and nothing transmits. Any ideas?

Quote:
Originally Posted by jer39lms View Post
7. Does caldav support real-time syncing so that additions can be made on the fly from the iPhone, web interface, or desktop client and will populate in all of these venues?
Syncing is periodic. Changes will eventually make their way to other devices, but not in real time.

I guess I can deal with no real-time sync so long as the syncing happens reasonably frequently - how often does it sync? it seems (based on calendar syncs) to sync with greater than 10 minute intervals?


at this point, the two things holding me back: 1) I can't seem to import calendar and contact info from Outlook (exchanger server data) and 2) I can't seem to get contacts to sync even though the credentials verified when I set up the carddev on my iPhone.

Anyone have another other input or ideas?

THansk very much,

Jeremy

[Cory]

For how often it will sync these settings are on your iPhone, I believe the shortest interval the iPhone will allow is 15 minutes.

[paul29]

Maybe I didn't understand what you were asking, but cutting and pasting 4gb of emails sounds totally impractical. You need an automated client of some sort, or a way to do a bulk transfer.

[BritTim]

Originally Posted by paul29

Maybe I didn't understand what you were asking, but cutting and pasting 4gb of emails sounds totally impractical. You need an automated client of some sort, or a way to do a bulk transfer.

The way you do this in practice is to cut and paste folders. Most people only have a few dozen folders or less. You need a fast Internet connection, and even then it is an all night operation, but it is not impractical. I have uploaded multi GB mailboxes more than once. Other techniques mostly end up as the same thing.

The other alternative I would consider is enabling IMAP on the Exchange server and using Fastmail's IMAP migration tool. That would be my choice if the Exchange server was on a very fast connection, but my client could not get access to fast upload speeds. Otherwise, I find it more robust to upload folders from the client.