How to save voice mail to disk 4

[rpw]

My wife passed away recently, and I am hoping to save her final voice mails to me--stored on our Nortel Meridian system--to a disk on my pc. Can anyone outline for me the necessary steps to follow? (We are novices when it comes to our phone system, and the company owner will not pay a consultant to come in to do this for me.)

Thanks to anyone who can offer help.

RW

 

[Magpye]

Sorry to hear of your loss RW, hope we can help you out.

Do you know what voicemail system you're using ?
Some systems have more options than others to access and save messages. Meridian Mail, CallPilot ?

I take it from your post, that you do not have easy access to one of those very helpful, deeply knowledgable but undervalued phone techs ? Did I mention handsome ?
I guess not.

From a purely low tech method, you could obtain one of those phone recorder adapters with a 2.5mm jack, and simply attach that to the phone and dictaphone, or into your soundcard on the PC.
For the PC, a program called Audacity is a good choice, not to mention it's free.

Let us know what systems you've got, and we can go from there...

Good judgement comes from experience,
which usually comes from bad judgement..

 

[rpw]

We use Meridian Mail. It's an Option 11-C. We have a Symposium system connected to it, a MAT, and a terminal connected into Meridian Mail. What we do from here, we do not know. Thanks for any help.

 

[telecomnorth]

Sorry for your loss.

You may have to play/record the messages as Magpye discribed.

Also, if your system allows it try the "send to" message command and enter in a offsite telephone number that has an anwsering machine or maybe a friend's work number who has unifined messaging allowing them to save the message on a computer and send those files to you. If it works Meridian Mail will call the number and play the message. When logged into your mail box, play one of the messages, press 7* and follow Meridian Mary's instructions for the "send to" command.

 

[telecomnorth]

Remember to enter the leading "9" as part of the offsite number.

 

[telecomnorth]

As I think this one through I believe Magpye's low-tech method is the way to go. Your local Radio Shack may sell the needed audio adaptor that is to be placed inline between the telephone set and the handset.

Also if someone onsite administrates the Meridian Mail have them change your Mailbox class of service to personnal with the days to delete read messages set to 0. Only hit save once both parmeters are set. With these changes Meridian Mail will not automatically delete the messages giving you more time. Lastly run a tape backup but not a full backup just a user backup. This way if something goes wrong and the messages are lost they still will be on the tape and can be recovered.

 

[rpw]

So it seems there's no simple command sequence that can be entered at the Meridian Mail terminal to 'save' messages for a particular extension to disk somewhere? (I imagined it would be simple to do.) If not, then I'll resort to the low-tech method, though I was hoping to capture her voice as accurately as possible. (I guess I'm a sentimental old fool who's not handling his grief well.)

Thanks for your suggestions.

 

[mikeyb123]

Unfortunately not, mail was never that advanced.

My thoughts are with you

It's not getting any smarter out there. You have to come to terms with stupidity, and make it work for you.

 

[NastyNed2]

Catching up on a few posts. Sorry for the late suggestion. We had to record a deceased mother's greeting to be able to give it to her young children.

We hooked up a Polycom conference phone to an analog line. The power supply for the Polycom also has an RCA jack which we used to feed the audio into the cound card on a PC. Worked very well. Then we just burned it to a CD.

Where I work now, we have GroupWise on the PCs working with our voicemail (CallPilot). We can listen to voicemail through our computer, but we can also save those messages as wav files.

These methods will give you the best audio quality that can be had with a phone system. As far as being sentimental, I would think anyone who lost a family member and was fortunate enough to still have their voice in voicemail would certainly want to preserve the messages. Just think of all the people who got messages on 9-11. With my wife learning last week she has cancer, I think I'll start saving her messages. I usually keep my voicemail cleaned out.

Hope this helps. Best wishes.

 

[rpw]

NN,

Thank you for your suggestions. I think we do have a Polycom phone in the conference room, so I will look into that. My thoughts and prayers are with you and your wife. Cherish every day and do not give up hope; catching cancer early is key, but new therapies are constantly being tested.

RPW

P.S. Sorry for the delay in responding. I just returned (to Michigan) from California, where my mother died last week.