eM Client Portable USB Version

Initial setup
1

Okay guys, I think I figured out how to make eMClient portable, as in run it from your USB thumb drive, memory card, external HDD or wherever you want.

I am really new here and I’ve been looking for a replacement email/calender client for my trusty old Thunderbird portable for quite some time and decided to give emClient a
try, but I am obcessed about portable apps, even at my home computer so I was desperate to get emClient to work portably.

Anyway after some hacking around I came to this hack.

Disclaimer: I am no programer, just a “power user”, so I don’t know if this breaks anything, or violates the software license. (To the developers: I don’t mean to do anything illegal here).
Notice: This is not a fully portable “stealth” solution, the emClient folder in your Windows profile is still created although it is not really used. Also I tried it only on the free version, not sure if it works on the commercial one, due application differences or license file storage or retrieval.

So here is how to do it

  1. Copy your emClient installation folder to wherever you want it to rest (thumb drive, external hard drive etc.) lets say F:\Applications\emClient
  2. Create a new empty text file in F:\Applications
  3. Save this file with watever name you want but with the extension .bat (not txt)
    Lets say ``` eMClientPortable.bat
4. Open this ``` eMClientPortable.bat ``` file in notepad and write the following  
  
cd emclient  
start mailclient.exe /dblocation .\databasepath  
  
5. Where ``` .\databasepath ``` is the relative path to the folder on your drive where emClient will place the database files. Customize it as you like but keep it relative so it compensates for Windows drive letter changes)  
6. If you have a previous database you would like to use just copy it to this new location, which in this case would be ``` F:\Applications\emClient ``` ``` \databasepath ```
7. Now launch your new emclient always from this new ``` eMClientPortable.bat ```
8. Ta-Da! Enjoy your new emClient Portable
You may later use some applications to convert the new bat to an exe if you like, just search the web for bat to exe  
  
Also if, like me, you don't like to run installers you extract your em client msi installer with the following command. Open cmd.exe, Start Menu\>run\>cmd, and then type this:  
  
``` msiexec /a d:\path\to\installer.msi /qb TARGETDIR=d:\destination\directory\for\extracting ```  
  
If anyone has a comercial version of eMClient and would like to test if this works please let us know. I may consider buying this software if it actually works.  
  
Edit: Formatting messed up my code
2

Hi Duarte, thank you for posting these instructions, however we believe due to our licensing policy, it won’t work anyways. As we have a one license per computer policy and when the hardware running the client changes, your license is automatically unsigned.

Thank you for understanding, but if anyone wants to use this, it’s probably not against the terms and conditions, but probably won’t work as regular portable versions.
Paul.

3

Thanks for letting me know, still this might be a good reference for anyone who wants to test the free version.
It is a shame that it doesn’t work for the commercial license. Hope the devs consider adding that as an option in the future.

4

Hi again, unfortunately the licensing policy does not allow this, since every computer needs it’s own license it would enable the ability to pirate the software, other concerns apply as well. 
Maybe in the future…

Thank you for understanding,
Paul.

5

another mail client I won’t be using, then. Shame, I really want to move from Thunderbird, but portable is essential

6

I am hoping the situation will improve with the upcoming new version eMClient 7, both in terms of portability and in terms of license

7

Sorry, we’re not currently planning making another portable version of the application. eM Client is an offline client that needs to be activated on each computer where the application is installed, the installation takes about 5 minutes, so we believe there’s no need for a portable release.

Regards,

8

Good day,

it does not matter how long the installation process takes, but where it is installed. The problem is that it is usually installed in the Program Files or Program Files (x86) directory. Unfortunately, not everywhere does the user have installation (administrator) rights and therefore a portable version is required. For now, I use the license for free and at least in this free version, portability should be automatically enabled.

Thanks