The entire Olminator project started when I recognized that the latest release of "Microsoft Outlook for Mac" as part of the Office 365 suite discontinued to support local items. Over the past years I had collected tens of thousands of email items, contacts and notes in local folders, and all of this was now threatened to disappear from the surface of this planet just because Microsoft had decided to change the features of its Outlook client. Very disappointing.
I tried to export my local data from Outlook and find a way to import it into alternative applications from Apple. Without success – file formats not being compatible. Thank you, Microsoft. So I started looking for converters on the Web and on the Apple App Store. And found a bunch of them. Some very pricey, others reasonably priced, and some an outright rip-off! So for a moment I considered what alternatives I had, and since there weren't many, bought one app, gave it a try and wasn't convinced of the conversion output I got. Tried another one. Same thing. So I got a bit annoyed spending money on applications that were not living up to my expectations.
So I thought: Fascinating! But there must be better ways of doing things! Let's "quickly" implement my own converter for my emails.
Now, about 1000 hours of implementing Olminator later, I'd consider my initial reflex to do things myself "quickly", maybe a bit arrogant. And if not that, it was definitely naive. But in the end, what started as a spontaneous idea, has meanwhile turned into probably the most complete and fastest converter for .olm archives on the planet. It has seen tons of testing with real-world data from many many archives thrown at it. I have ironed out a bunch of bugs that had initially made it into the application, but I am in the meantime very confident that the converter works rock-solid and has even (keep your fingers crossed) all the "specialities" properly covered. One major problem being: Microsoft has decided to not make any official spec or documentation available about the .olm archive format. So it's all about re-engineering from concrete test data. Luckily I have over 150 GB of test data myself. Plus a few supportive friends who helped testing with their own vast archives as well. Not to mention all the users out there who contributed with their feedback in constantly improving Olminator. Thanks everyone for your patience and support!
Should you nevertheless run into an issue – my apologies! –, please reach out to me via mailto:'Björn Goerke'
In the meantime, Olminator has evolved quite a bit from how it started out: It got much more powerful and complete, but things got a bit more complex as a consequence. And in some areas it's showing: on the UI side with the .olm viewer coming in, the super simple initial UI design didn't work any more. Plus the additional conversion formats required a different approach. So I changed quite a lot on the user experience side with the latest releases greater v2.30. I am not completely satisfied with how things look & feel now, even though I tried to unclutter the UI again and accomodate for the latest features. Trying to keep simple things simple, and the complex ones possible, has always been on my agenda. I hope I haven't completely failed with this attempt. Feel free to let me know what you think and if you have improvement proposals.
I am aware that I am striving to perfect a "tiny niche use-case" application for a shrinking community of people in a world in which locally stored items in Microsoft Outlook are slowly but steadily disappearing after Microsoft's Office 365 de-support decision. But, hey, as long as there is still a locally stored email or contact info locked into Microsoft Outlook out there that needs to be saved: Olminator to the rescue!
All in all, I have received overwhelmingly positive feedback and enthusiasm about Olminator over the past months – which is most rewarding part of developing and making it available for free on the App Store for others, of course. Thanks again, everyone! Some folks wanted to buy me a coffee at least, which I appreciate a lot, but the nicest thing you can still do is supporting me in outrunning all the "commercial" converters out there by a) supporting me with fixing potential bugs and b) providing a positive review on the Apple App Store. 😀
As of version 2.75, though, I decided to offer an in-app purchase option for the more sophisticated features of Olminator. The core conversion functionality I intend to keep free-of-charge and fully unrestricted, so you can still convert an entire .olm archive for free. But since I have been investing – and keep spending – a lot of time developing and maintaining the application, I thought it's fair to ask for some contribution on your end. I hope you understand. You can try out all the enhanced features in trial-mode before making up you mind whether you want to go for the in-app purchase.
Thanks for your continued support!
Live long and prosper 🖖🏽,