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UserManual
MIST Online User Manual
Featured What is MIST?MIST stands for eMail Import System for TntMPD. TntMPD, designed by Troy Wolbrink, is a wonderful tool for doing personal fundraising. However, it does not have a means of automatically associating email with contacts. You can do this manually, but this is time-consuming and error-prone... which means most of us eventually stop doing it! MIST was designed to greatly simplify the email importing task. Please note that MIST is not directly affiliated with TntMPD or TntWare, but we hope it will be useful to the TntMPD community! Please do not seek help for MIST on the TntMPD forums. Instead, see Getting Help at the bottom of this page. MIST Features
System Requirements
Configuring MISTYou can have MIST up and running in just minutes! See the description of each field below:
TntMPD
My Email AddressesEnter a list of your personal email addresses, one per line. If MIST finds one of these email addresses in the "From" field of an email, it knows the message is from you to a contact (rather than from a contact to you.) Email Addresses To IgnoreEnter a list of email addresses to ignore, one per line. If MIST finds one of these email addresses in the "From" field of an email, it ignores the message and moves on. If MIST finds one of these email addresses in the "To" or "Cc" field of an email, it ignores that recipient and moves onto the next recipient. This feature is particularly useful if a husband and wife both want to use MIST. The husband tells MIST to "ignore" his wife's email addresses and she does the same for his. This ensures that their "husband and wife" contact in TntMPD doesn't get filled up with messages to/from each other. As each then runs MIST, you will see "the right thing" in the subject line of the history items based on what they put in the My name field. For example:
MIST would record the following messages in Jane Donor's TntMPD history:
Where does my configuration get stored?By default, MIST stores your configuration in your User Application Data folder. As long as you're backing up your user folder, you should be fine. Using MISTOnce MIST is configured, you just need to do a couple things:
Setting up your email accountFirst, in your email client (Thunderbird, Outlook, Mail, etc.), create a folder that MIST will connect to to download email. This folder should be named whatever you named the folder in the MIST configuration. (Gmail users, you'll create a "label" instead.) Now as you write to donors and donors write to you, any email that you want MIST to import into TntMPD should go into this folder. (Remember to include "Sent" items from you to the donor so that these get recorded too.) If using Gmail, just label the conversation with the new label you've created. (Though see GmailIsNotIMAP.) Importing EmailOnce you have at least one email in that folder, you can tell MIST to import your email! You'll see something like this:
After MIST connects to your email server, it will process through each message, examining both your TntMPD database and the lists of email addresses you specified in the MIST Configuration. MIST shows you what it is doing with each non-ignored message as it processes the folder. You can verify this afterwards by taking a look at your TntMPD "History" view. MIST will note problems using yellow icons. These are usually email addresses that can't be found in TntMPD. You can double-click these and see the details, copy the email address, and then easily add it to a contact in TntMPD. See below:
Once you've added the missing addresses from the yellow icons, you can re-run the import and it will import those messages properly. Note: MIST will never import the same message twice! This means you can safely run MIST on your folder multiple times; it will just ignore emails that it has already imported. (Technically, MIST looks for the combination of contact and time; this means that you are free to modify the TntMPD history subject line and contents if you like - MIST will not import that email again if you do.) MIST will also note "errors" using red icons. Theoretically, errors shouldn't happen... but it's a fallen world! If they do, please tell us about it by Getting Help. Once you have successfully imported the email in your folder, you can either leave that email in the folder or empty it out. In either case, MIST will never import a message a second time. It will just take less time if MIST doesn't have to re-check all the already-added messages. TroubleshootingHere are some issues you may run into and how to solve them. I can't connect to my email server.Verify that...
If you need further help, see Getting Help below. In Gmail I can see all the messages, but MIST is only downloading some of them.See GmailIsNotIMAP. Getting HelpHave a problem or request not covered here? Write to the MIST User Discussion List and describe your problem in as detailed a way as possible. Please do NOT include any sensitive information like your password or names of your TntMPD contacts! |
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Howdy there, I downloaded, installed and configured MIST. I am using W7 as an OS. My version of TNTMmd is 2.1 r41. My problem with MIST is following: it stops after 273 (out of 10500) emails in my inbox. What to do? Here are few last lines in the window: WARNING: Contact not found in TntMPD for design@visign.hr Processing message 295 of 10724: dnevni red WARNING: Contact not found in TntMPD for ketigogic@hotmail.com Processing message 296 of 10724: dnevni red WARNING: Contact not found in TntMPD for ketigogic@hotmail.com Processing message 297 of 10724: Josip! Processing message 298 of 10724: None
Program just sits there and doesn't move for a half an hour. Davor, FL CCCi Croatia
Hello Davor. I'm sorry it took me so terribly long to respond. I'd failed to have Google Code notify me when someone posts here.
The problem you're describing should be fixed in MIST 2.0, now available.
I just downloaded MIST and it's working flawlessly, so far. My question is whether there's a way to set up a second email address for synchronization?? I have two addresses that regularly receive TnT-related emails. How about somehow installing a second instance of the program with settings for the other address? Would that work?
@jwsink: Glad to hear MIST is working for you! Your suggestion for having multiple email accounts is a good one, and I have the same need. I'm planning to add this feature before long. (The hardest part will be the visual part; the code that does the email connections won't need to change much.)
In the meantime, there is a little trick that might help you if you know your way around your computer. You can pass along an argument to MIST that specifies the configuration directory. If you copy the current MIST configuration directory (in your %APPDATA% folder, like C:\Users\MyName?\AppData?\Roaming on Windows 7) to a new location, you can specify that directory on the MIST command line, and then launch one or the other. Does that make sense? I've used that feature exclusively for development up until now, but I don't see any reason why it shouldn't work.
I played around with this. Copied the MIST directory to MIST/MIST2 and then made a copy of the batch file named MIST2.bat . Then, I changed the directories in the MIST2.bat file to reflect the new directory, but I'm obviously doing something wrong because when I change the address using one instance of the program, it changes it on the other, too. I guess this is over my head, and I'll probably just have to wait until you update the program (unless my rambling here gives away some simple mistake I'm making).
Either way, I'm glad for the program and look forward to continuing to use it! Thanks!
@jwsink: Assuming you're on Windows 7, you should have a setup similar to this:
You then have a shortcut to MIST (pointing to mist.bat) on your start menu, which was installed by default. Just make a copy of this shortcut (on your desktop or wherever else you like), and then right-click, select properties, and add this to the end of the Target field:
(Note that in the examples above, you'll need to replace MyName with whatever your user name actually is.)
I do hope to make this easier in the future =)
Thanks for taking all this time time help!
I think my confusion (from the beginning) is that I have TWO directories that seem to be working together. I am using windows 7, and there is a directory labeled MIST under ...appdata/roaming. I've copied that and named the second directory MIST2.
However, the target directory for the bat file is here:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\MIST\mist.bat"
When I do your procedure (above) using the x86 directory, both bat files seem to reference the same data file - probably located in appdata\roaming. Just seems like - on my machine - it's not so clean and simple for some reason.
Thanks again. I'm really appreciating your help. But it's fine whenever you want to bail out of this tech support session! :-)
Hi again! I'm happy to get this working for you if possible, so I'm not yet ready to bail =)
It sounds you have the MIST/MIST2 folders set up properly. That's where MIST stores your settings. However, you should only have one .bat file, and where you have it is exactly where it should be. That .bat file, if no parameters are passed to it, will look under ...appdata/roaming/MIST for preferences. However, if you specify a parameter to it (in the form of a folder path), it will look under that folder for the preferences. So, you needn't copy the batch file - just copy the shortcut to it. You rightly saw the "Target" field in your comment above, and that's correct for the original MIST location. What you want to do is have the shortcut copy target say:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\MIST\mist.bat" C:\Users\myname\appdata\roaming\MIST2
Then it will look in the MIST2 folder for your settings, and it should treat them both separately. Does that make sense?
While you're at it, MIST 2.1 was just released with a few new features, most noticeable of which is a new icon. You can also find MIST on Facebook and Google+ now if you want to stay apprised of new updates. I hope to make them often.
OOOOHHHH! I see my mistake. I was changing the target field completely instead of just adding the new data location to the end of it (as you clearly stated in your original directions).
I'm traveling this weekend, so it'll probably be tomorrow before I can apply these changes...but I should be able to make this work. I'll let you know how it goes...tomorrow or Monday. Thank you again!! Even I should be able to follow these directions, now! :D
New problem. I'm now able to run a separate instance of the program. When I run MIST with the new arguments, it realizes that it's the first time I've run the program. Then, I go through the set up screen and am able to successfully test my email connection. HOWEVER...now, I get a brand new error stating that MIST is "unable to save settings" - and when I exit out and restart, it prompts me to enter the information from scratch again. :/
FYI - I decided to install v2.1 and completely uninstalled the previous version, deleted all my old directories, and started from scratch with your directions in light of your last post...but that didn't solve my problem. I also tried copying the data directory into "My Documents" in hopes that it would be able to save the settings file to that location...that didn't help either. Any new ideas? Here's my latest target directory argument:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\MIST\mist.bat" C:\Users\Jeremy Sink\Documents\MIST2
Hi Jeremy! I see the problem. I hadn't considered that you might have a space in your username. (Windows is picky about stuff like that!) Just change that last part to:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\MIST\mist.bat" "C:\Users\Jeremy Sink\Documents\MIST2"
That should do it!
Sure did! Thanks so much! I appreciate your help...and the program. Please let me know if there's ever a way I can return the favor!
Glad to help! You can return the favor by telling others about MIST. Be sure to like MIST on Facebook and Google+!