Exporing Windows Mail to Outlook 2010 ???

  • If anyone has any experience with doing this, please reply and let me know. Here's what I've been working on so far:

    Wife's new laptop has Outlook 2010 on Windows 7 Pro w/SP1. Wife's old computer was using Windows Mail on Windows Vista. I was able to export her e-mail to a folder and then import that data into Windows Live Mail on her Win 7 Pro laptop, and then the export to "Exchange" format as described here: appeared to work, but when she goes into Outlook 2010, she can't see any evidence that the data is present. I didn't set up her e-mail account within Windows Live Mail because we don't need her to be funnctional with that. Could that have been the cause? The export process from WLM clearly demonstrates that it's navigating through the various folders of her e-mail, so we're mystified as to why it's not showing up within Outlook. We've performed the export twice now, and once with Outlook open and once without (which prompted for a profile, and I've proved to myself that there's only one Outlook profile). Any/all help would be appreciated.

    Steve

    (aka sgmunson)

    :w00t::w00t::w00t:

    Steve (aka sgmunson) 🙂 🙂 🙂
    Rent Servers for Income (picks and shovels strategy)

  • When doing this kind of import/exports, I always use the IMAP server as temporary data store. Is this an option for you?

    Also, I would ask the question in a specialized forum. I am sure that many SQL professionals know this kind of stuff, but I suspect you would get better and faster answers on a windows forum.

    -- Gianluca Sartori

  • IMAP Server ? I've heard the term IMAP before, but I thought Outlook and it's variants are MAPI-based. Can you elaborate on what you mean by IMAP Server, and what role it plays on a Windows 7 machine as well has how one would make use of it?

    Steve

    (aka sgmunson)

    :-):-):-)

    Steve (aka sgmunson) 🙂 🙂 🙂
    Rent Servers for Income (picks and shovels strategy)

  • Uh, yes, it's the same with MAPI...

    I mean, when you have a mail server that stores your data, you don't download the messages locally, but you let the server handle the storage. This way, when you connect with another client, you don't have to download the messages again.

    If you downloaded the messages into a local folder, you can upload them again to the server (it's just a drag and drop AFAIK) and then you leave them on the server. It works with IMAP and should work with MAPI.

    -- Gianluca Sartori

  • Ok, I get that. However, the reason that we don't leave the messages on the ISP's mail server is privacy, as it's become obvious that trusting one's e-mail to the ISP is not particularly wise, as they have no genuine interest in privacy, and are already scanning one's e-mails for spam, so there's no reason they can't use that data to categorize what kind of e-mails people send, and I see no reason to hand them any more data than they already have.

    Secondly, we already have the data present on the new computer, in the Windows Live Mail's local storage. I guess the only way to find out if WLM needs to be set up to handle the email account before such an export will work is to try it. I had figured that it shouldn't matter, but who knows...

    If you have any further guidance, let me know, as once a message is downloaded from our ISP, there's no "putting it back", so to speak, and I'm not willing to leave them with that data for any longer than it takes to download it, so I sure won't be pursuing any forwarding ideas either, as we already have the data readily available, just need to get it into Outlook 2010. Push comes to shove I'll probably go looking for a VBScript.

    Steve

    :-):-):-)

    Steve (aka sgmunson) 🙂 🙂 🙂
    Rent Servers for Income (picks and shovels strategy)

  • That's ok. If you don't feel comfortable with storing data in the ISP servers, you can setup your "home server" just for the purpose of this migration.

    You could use hMailServer[/url].

    Or, even better, find someone who knows how to convert the message stores, which was your original question. 🙂

    -- Gianluca Sartori

  • Hi there -

    I have exactly the same problem as Steve - wife's laptop, windows live mail, ran the export, looked like it worked, but mails not showing up in outlook. Steve, did you ever find a solution? I'm stumped -

  • No, and time available to mess around with it has gone to zero with me working outside my home state. However, the data is clearly in existence in Outlook, but there just aren't any pointers to it. An attempt to delete a special folder (with no obvious content) resulted in it taking at least as long to delete it as had been spent attempting the import. Seems to me it's a bug in the import process. I've long since forgotten what folder it was had the content in it...

    If anyone has any ideas, now there are at least 2 of us that could really use some help on this.

    Steve

    (aka sgmunson)

    Steve (aka sgmunson) 🙂 🙂 🙂
    Rent Servers for Income (picks and shovels strategy)

Viewing 8 posts - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply