[HOWTO] - Outlook (PC) & Outlook Express to Mail.app

[Decado]

Hi!
my girlfriend would like to transfer her microsoft outlook inbox (on a windows pc) to her new iBook G4.
is this possible? we can't even find the file outlook stores the mails in.

grateful for help

/dec

[Tommo]

The file you need to find has a .pst extension and should be found in the profile for the account logged in when the mail is used. Just do a search and you will find it quite quickly.

Unfortunately, and I will be happy if I can be proved wrong, there is no way to use mailbox files created in Outlook with either Mail or Entourage. Though I have seen there is a way of importing via Mozilla mail, but I tired this unsuccesfully on several occasions.

[Zammy-Sam]

If you are talking about Outlook XP (not Express) you will find it clicking in Outlook on file -> data folder (or something like that) -> Open the working folder (or something like that). Browsing to that folder will be slightly tough, since it's located in some hidden folders.
I don't know how to import the outlook.pst to apples mail.app anymore, but I did succeed (2002 ). I was googling for this and found a step by step instruction. Unfortunately I didn't save it and don't remember the site, but once I find it again, I will come back to this thread and post it..

[fryke]

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...&query=outlook - This shows that you can simply drag all your Outlook Express (!) messages to an empty folder on the PC and you can drag those into Entourage on the Mac. I dunno whether this'd also work with Outlook (from the Office package)...

[fryke]

Oh, and of course, Entourage can export to .mbox style format, which you can then use in Mail.app.

[Decado]

Thanks!
i will give this a try and, hopefully, post a success story here
finally we ca get rid of that ugly pc that has been standing like a prehistoric monolith in the bedroom ever since she moved in...

[Decado]

ok.
i followed frykes tip with a small refinement:
1) Imported the mailboxes from Outlook to Outlook express
2) draged them from Outlook Express into two folders on the desktop (inbox and outbox)
3) copied these to the ibook
4) draged them into entourage (30 day trial).
5) started Mail and choose "import mailboxes" from Entourage.
6) said goodbye to the pc forever.

thanks everyone!

[fryke]

Cool! So I guess Outlook can't directly export the way OE can (drag & drop). But if importing to OE from Outlook works fine, guess that's a good way! Congrats on banishing that PC.