Sunday 13 May 2012

Moving email and contacts from OE to Outlook

Moving from XP to Win7?

One of the tricky bits is getting email from Outlook Express to Outlook proper.
Copying the dbx files to the new pc is easy enough.
Then from WLM simply Import OE v6 Mail and Contacts (altogh the contacts don't come through).
An important step is to MOVE the imported mail from the Storage Folder called Imported Files into folders you have created in WLM. This takes time when there are a lot of folders containing large amounts of email.
Then from Outlook, you import mail and it detects the WLM store.

I don't bother exporting or importing the Mail Account settings, even when there is more then one. A few screengrabs of the various config screens copied across to the new PC are all that is required (along with the password/s). Make sure you look at all the screens, especially if the Outgoing "Logon Using" is ticked.

Contacts is almost as simple (when you know how:)

Copy the wab file to the new pc. Double click it, which will [somewhat presumptuously] import all the contacts into Windows Contacts folder.
Then from Outlook you can choose the Open > Import Messages & Contacts (choose contacts only) in the WLM format.. as described correctly here:
http://www.msoutlook.info/question/382
This process took longer to import than the messages, but may have been because Outlook was "preparing to Send and Receive"...

A tip therefore is to force all the Email clients to work offline, by either disconnecting from the network, setting the clients to Work Offline, or in my case, leaving the passwords blank until the work was done.