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vBulletin PM Reader
Posted on March 13th, 2009 38 comments
vBulletin PM Reader
Many online forums use vBulletin as their forum engine. For each forum user, vBulletin provides a limited inbox for private messages. It also lets users to download their inbox as a single XML file.
vBulletin PM Reader is a free utility for managing your private messages in different vBulletin forums locally. It imports XML files generated by vBulletin, parses all the messages, and stores them in a local database.
I developed vBulletin PM Reader for personal use. I used to receive many private messages from users in some of the forums I was a member, but my Inbox folder could have had only 50 messages. I was looking for a way to keep track of all the messages I receive; therefore, I created vBulletin PM Reader. Later on, I thought there might be other people who have the same problem, so I published vBulletin PM Reader here.
Features:
- vBulletin PM Reader is a Freeware and does NOT install any Ad ware or Spyware.
- BBCodes are supported for formatting text. Supported tags are: [B],[U],[I],[URL],[CODE],[IMG],[RIGHT],[CENTER],[LEFT],[RTL],[COLOR],[SIZE],[QUOTE].
- Smilies are supported in messages. Users can have different smilies set for different forums.
- vBulletin PM Reader can search for any particular message in its database. Search filter could be a combination of folder name, sender or receiver name, date/time, or message subject.
- vBulletin PM Reader lets user to have different database files to store messages from different online forums.
- Messages are stored according to their folder name and they could be sorted by their date, subject, sender or receiver’s name.
- Duplicated messages are recognized automatically and could be reconciled by user.
- Unwanted messages could be deleted from database.
- Each message could be exported to a HTML file.
- Right-to-Left reading is supported in preview pane.
Considerations:
- vBulletin PM Reader needs Microsoft Jet Engine as database provider. MS Jet Engine is installed by MS Windows and MS Office installation packages, but if you are using an old version of Windows (e.g. Win95 or Win98), you should download and install MS Jet Engine from Microsoft website before using this software.
- Formatting text in QUOTE and CODE blocks might be added to the software in later releases.
- Supporting Similes might be added to the software in later releases.
- Two sample XML files will be installed in the installation path.
Versions:
- 1.0.1.41 : (2008/06/05) (Current Version)
- Fixed bug caused by IE7
- Message navigation buttons are added to toolbar.
- Some minor bugs and memory leaks are fixed.
- 1.0.0.37 : (2007/03/15)
- BBCode Text formatting are supported now.
- Smilies support is added for each data file.
- XML Importer code is optimized.
- Exported files are text-formatted.
- Some minor bugs and memory leaks are fixed.
- 0.9.2.22 : (2006/12/05)
- Toolbars and menu customization is added.
- 0.9.2.21 : (2006/11/25)
- The first released Beta version.
System Requirements:
- Windows 98, Me, 2000, XP.
- 1.30 MB free space on hard disk.
- Memory usages is depended on database size, but the minimum consumption is 12.5 MB.
Download:
33 responses to “vBulletin PM Reader”
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Good piece, for a long time searched, but in unicode does not read, only question marks: (
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Yes, you are right. Unicode is not supported.
Actually I started working on a Unicode enabled version a few months ago, but there are some bugs to be fixed to make it working properly.
It’s been a few months that I haven’t had time to work on it anymore. I will get back to it as soon as I find some free time.
Regards
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Thanks for a prompt reply:) I’m looking forward
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This is the best you could find to manage your PM’s. I was needing a tool to manage my 5K pm inbox as admin of forex-tsd.com. A place with more than 100k members. As you know vBulletin lacks about a good search tool to manage your pm’s and vBulletin PM Reader is the one you need. I hope you don’t mind if I post on the forum to promote this tool.
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Linuxser,
Thank you for your nice comment. I’m glad that this tool is useful for you.Also, thanks for promoting vBulletin PM Reader in your forum.
Regards
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TeCNoYoTTa June 24th, 2009 at 16:55
thanks ….but download link is broken
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Hi TeCNoYoTTa,
I’m sorry. There was a spelling problem in download link. I fixed it. Now you can download it.
Regards
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Loren Petrich June 26th, 2009 at 00:11
I’m thinking of writing a MacOS-X version of your vBulletin PM reader, using OSX Cocoa API’s. I hope that you don’t feel that you have a copyright on the concept, though I might call it my “vBulletin PM Viewer”.
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Hi Loren,
That would be a nice idea, and of course I don’t have any claimed copyright on the concept.
I’ll be glad to hear about it when you are done. I can put a link to your application web page for MacOS visitors in my site.Good Luck
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Loren Petrich June 27th, 2009 at 14:14
I ended up writing a Python/TK version first.
http://homepage.mac.com/lpetrich/VBPMViewer/VBPMViewer.py
You can give it filenames on the command line, or else do File > Open. I have both single and multi versions, because Windows Python/TK’s multi-file open is broken.
You double-click on a filename (top left), then on a folder name (bottom left), then on a PM name (center) to see it (right). I don’t have any rendering.
Its resizing is rather broken — some problem with TK?
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Great app, I own many boards and keep old pm’s has been tough, this is perfect for me. I also posted on several of my sites for all the members to use as well.
Thank you
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Loren Petrich July 28th, 2009 at 06:46
I now have a home page for my PM-viewer efforts:
My Private-Message Viewer – http://homepage.mac.com/lpetrich/PMViewer/PMViewer.html
I wish to announce my first OSX-native version. It does not do searching or BBCode rendering, but it does open and save an import and export and display reasonably.
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@R1Lover: Thank you!
@Loren: Good job! unfortunately I don’t have Mac to test your app.
Good Luck
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this is so funny,your forum activity is mostlu in persian forums(which happens to be a UTF-8 forum)and yet u didnt make it for utf8?
try harder,did you try to encode it and send it ?
that way encoding it wouldnt be a problem.
i mean encode it the way frontpage does, do you know what i mean ?
remember the encoding of persian words it’s like this :
سلام
to :
سلام
it’s just a simple replace function ! -
@Mehdi,
At the time I wrote this small utility, the Persian forum in which I was most active (barnamenevis.org) was using Windows-1256 encoding for exported XML files, and this utility was built initially for myself to let me have an archive of my PMs in that forum, so there was no need to provide UTF-8 support for it. I decided to publish the utility later. So the problem for not supporting Unicode is not technical.
Actually I have a Unicode version in my SVN repository, but it is not ready to be published, it has some bugs, and I really don’t like the way the current BBCode parser works, so I decided to fix the current bugs, and rewrite the parser before publishing a new version.
The problem is I don’t have that much free time to spend on this project. I will come back to it when I have free time for it.
Maybe at the time that the new version is published, I publish the whole source code too.
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Love that tool!
At the moment you able to search for the title, the recipient and the sender!
A search functionality to search for a text inside the messages would be great!
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Thank you, Korni! I will consider your suggestion for the next version.
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Hey, it’s a great program and I’m one of those who wants UTF-8 support too.
I know about your not having time to finish it, just wanted to say thank you. At the moment I manually change UTF-8 to windows-1250 encoding in XML file and I’d advised users on my forum to do that.
Hope you’d finish it asap.
Great job you’ve done, thank you! -
Hi Allen,
Thank you for your kind comment. I do hope too that I can get some free time to add some new features to vBulletin. It’s been a while that it hasn’t been updated.
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Hello. I am very thankful for what you have written, thanks! I would like to add another vote to add functionality to search the message itself as well. (Vs. just the title.) This would be VERY helpful.
Thanks! And/or the source and maybe I could give it a go. 
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who invented this?
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Hi Ali.
This tool is useful, thank you.
thats great idea to publish it as an open source tool. -
سلام . یک پیشنهاد دارم . اینطور که من متوجه شدم برنامه ی شما لیست پیام ها رو از طریق فایل اکس ام الی که از پنل دریافت میشه استخراح میکنه . میشه این امکان رو اضافه کرد که کاربر/مدیر به طور مستقیم پس از وارد کردن “نام کاربری” و “پسورد” به پنل مدیریت در ویبولتن متصل بشه و آنلاین پیغام ها رو دریافت کنه .
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@مهران: نیازی نیست که کاربر حتما مدیر باشه.
برای کاربران عادی هم میشه این کار رو کرد، البته باید کاربر قبلش در سایت لاگین کرده باشه. باید درباره لاگین به وبولتین، و اینکه به چه شکلی عمل لاگین در آن صورت میگیره، تحقیق کرد. با فرض اینکه بدونیم وبولتین چطور اطلاعات لاگین کاربر رو دریافت میکنه، مابقی مراحل کار ساده است. -
Hello,
very good application but I cannot read anything is written in Greek..
This is because of the Unicode??
Is there any way I can manage to read Greek??
Thank you,
John B. -
Hi John,
Yes, it is because of the app being non-Unicode. I have a Unicode enabled version in my code repository, but it is not stable, and I haven’t found any time to spend on it and make it stable enough to be published.
For your case, if your forum saves the XML file in Unicode, you have to encode it to ANSI using proper Greek code page. You can try NotePad++ for that.
Also you need to choose your Greek code page as the default non-Unicode code page in Control Panel | Regional and Language settings.
Best Regards
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EvilRebel May 10th, 2011 at 04:00
Hey. Just installed this and so far it looks good if it wasn’t for two problems. The first one is the encoding thing, but I can live with that. What however is a bit more annoying is that all line breaks seems to be ignored. Any idea as to what may be causing this?
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Hi, maybe the line breaks are saved in Unix format (only LF character) or Mac format (only CR character) rather than Windows format (CR + LF characters). You can check this using an editor like NotePad++, there is a “Show all characters” button, which shows you the line break characters. Open the XML file in the editor, and make sure the editor is configured to show all the characters (including hidden ones). If you do not see CR LF at the end of the lines, then that is the cause of the problem. You can replace the current line breaks with CR LF characters to fix this.
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Great software Ali,
Suggestion: Would be nice if the the search function can work through the messsage content, not just the title.
Thanks
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Will the unicode-supported version ever be released?
Thanks!
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Hi Pete,
I really hope it does. Actually for me it is not just Unicode support. I want to change vBulletin PM Reader significantly; improving search, adding support for Unicode, better GUI, better BBCode parser, and so on. So far I haven’t had enough free time to restart this old project. I’m not sure when I will be back to it, but it is always on my list
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Pidgeon March 3rd, 2012 at 20:07
Hello, I downloaded the latest version of “vBulletin PM Reader”.
I created a new database, after that I received and error:
“Could not open database.”
I tried to import the “Sent Messages.xml” and “Recieved Messages.xml”, but I received the following error in both cases:
“An error occured while importing XML nodes to the database”
I’m using Windows XP SP3 32 bit, help is appreciated.
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Are there any issues installing to Win7 64? Any “tips” to doing it successfully?
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[...] luck, Loren & thank you for mentioning my vBulletin PM reader in your software. Share and [...]
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ATTN: Everyone who keeps PM's and/or is nearing their PM limit - G35Driver August 25th, 2011 at 05:14
[...] somewhere you can find it, like your "My Documents" folder Now go download this tool: http://vcldeveloper.com/products/pro…tin-pm-reader/ Here's the direct link: http://vcldeveloper.com/downloads/vB…_PM_Reader.zip Install the program [...]
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Artgeo April 13th, 2009 at 11:51