Need advice on Ecco migration

Posted by Ken
Jul 15, 2013 at 03:56 PM

I have been using Ecco Pro on my machine at work since their first release in 1993. And while it survived the introduction of GroupWise many years ago and remained my personal calendar and information manager, it eventually took on a reduced role when we migrated to Outlook around 2006. However, Win XP was our OS of choice, and since my workstation has not been upgraded for a number of years, my IT folks were kind enough to allow Ecco Pro to reside on my machine so I could have access to files and information. Unfortunately, we are now migrating ton Win7, and having Ecco Pro on my machine is not going to happen. So, I need to migrate two areas of information forward, and would like some feedback and suggestions about the best way to approach this change. The fist thing that I need to migrate is my address book. I have hundreds of addresses and phone conversation notes and would like to have access to that information. The second area needing migration is a number of views of information in one file. These could possibly be “flattened” if necessary, and I am guessing that they might be candidates for Excel spreadsheets, assuming that I understand that the information contained will no longer be linked.

So, the choices that I have considered are as follows:

—bring in an old XP-based laptop/netbook with Ecco installed on it
pros - no file migration necessary, full access to all of Ecco (albeit offline)
cons - security of laptop (as I work in a cubicle), space on an already cluttered desk, working off of two machines (one networked and one offline)

—migrate the tabbed pages to Excel
pros - easy access to data if migration is possible
cons - “flattening” of data (loss of Ecco’s database type relations)

—migrate my address contacts to some file format or into some program that resides on some combination of my iPad, the cloud, or some file format that can be read my MS Office
pros - easy access and a foundation for future use
cons - mapping the fields for migration

I’ll say right now that while I use Outlook as my “official” work calendar and e-mail client, I have never taken to its address book. This may be a mistake on my part for not giving it a chance, but somebody is going to need to convince me that I am not trying to put a round peg of data into a square hole of a program. Also know that my IT staff will not allow any other software to be installed on my machine. They were kind about Ecco for 20 years, but times have changed. Any advice or suggestions, especially for the address book, would be greatly appreciated. I am currently on medical leave and am out of the office, but I expect to be returning sometime in mid-August. They have a new Win7 machine ready to install when I return, so I would like to have some solution for accessing my data before then if possible

Thanks,

—Ken