Import Outlook PST contacts and Emails into Entourage

D

DrSpirograph

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I've just been helping a colleague out with this, and it turned out to be harder than I'd hoped for moving data between Microsoft applications, so I thought I'd share the method I eventually got it going with.

My colleague had a USB drive with a backup created by Microsoft Outlook (not sure what version), that he wanted to import into Entourage. He did not have access to the original MS Outlook install, as the backup was from a previous computer at a previous job.

The method I followed for getting the emails was.

backup.pst ----(readpst on linux)---> mbox files --> drag and drop into Entourage

for contacts
backup.pst ----(readpst on linux)---> mbox file (but really a vcf file) ---> rename to contacts.vcf ----(MoreFunctions for Address Book plugin)----> Thunderbird ----> .csv file ---> entourage

So for this, you'll need
readpst - http://www.five-ten-sg.com/libpst
Thunderbird - http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/
More functions for Thunderbird Addressbook - https://nic-nac-project.org/~kaosmos/morecols-en.html

I used the tools I could use easily, that's why I went for readpst on a linux box, because I run linux - readpst is a command line tool, so it maybe it will also compile directly on OSX, there also seems to be a Cygwin version out there that could run on Windows.
Ubuntu users, note that the version you can get with Ubuntu 8.04 is too old to read the latest Outlook files, instead, I had to download the latest rpm and use alien to install it on Ubuntu.

I've written this assuming you have access to Ubuntu linux 8.04

So:
  1. Download the latest RPM of readpst (at this time 0.6.22-2)
  2. Install alien to convert it to an Debian (Ubuntu) package.
    In a terminal type:
    Code: 
    sudo apt-get install alien
  3. Convert it to a Debian package
    Code: 
    sudo alien libpst-0.6.22-1.i386.rpm
  4. Install the Debian package
    Code: 
    sudo dpkg -i libpst_0.6.22-2_i386.deb
  5. Use readpst to extract the emails and contacts
    Change to the directory where the pst file is.
    Code: 
    cd /media/backup/
    I created a clean directory to dump it all into as it can be quite large.
    You'll probably need a few hundred megabytes of free space if you have a lot of emails.
    Code: 
    mkdir restore
cd restore
readpst -r ../backup.pst

    The -r option means it will recursively unpack all emails and contacts.
    This may take some time.
  6. Rename the contacts file
    I found the contacts in a folder named Contacts.
    In this folder the contacts were in a file called mbox, but it was actually a vCard file, so I renamed it appropriately.
    Code: 
    cd Contacts
mv mbox contacts.vcf
  7. Install thunderbird and fetch the More Functions plugin and install it
  8. Open Thunderbird
    Don't worry about setting up a new account, you can cancel that wizard.
  9. Open the address book
  10. Import the addresses
    Go to Tools->Actions for Contacts...->Import vCard/vcf
  11. Export the addresses as csv
    Go to Tools->Export
    Make sure you choose CSV file type, not the default LDIF.

    Now you're ready to import it all into Entourage.
    For the addresses, just go to File->Import
    The option will be something like CSV or text file (sorry remembering this off the top of my head). Then choose your CSV file that you exported.

    For your emails:
    Open up Entourage on emails, and find or create a folder you want to import them into.
    Open a Finder window to where you restored your emails.
    When you've found the folder containing your emails in the finder, open that folder, and there'll be a file called mbox, that contains the emails.
    Drag that file into Entourage and drop it onto the email folder in entourage you want the emails to be in.

    Done!
 
The linux part kinda makes it a non-Mac OS X HOWTO. Can anyone try and compile this on a Mac? I'd want a Mac-only solution.

Do I get this correctly, btw.: Using that command line tool, you'd end up with perfectly readable material for Mac OS X' Address Book and Mail.app? So no Thunderbirdiness would be required, basically, because once it's in Mail.app and Address Book, Entourage can take it from there? (Or you could just use Apple's tools, since those work better...)
 
Yeah, I know it's not ideal, but all the other solutions out there seemed to involve getting hold of MS Outlook, so I figured it was better than that.

The way the solution came out that way was that I was trying to find a quick solution that meant me spending minimum time on my colleagues computer - since that meant he couldn't use it.

By using readpst, you end up with emails in mbox format and contacts in vCard format.
I believe OSX's Address Book does read vCard, I don't know of Mail imports mbox (I haven't tried using either of them).

I was trying to avoid messing with other applications to make the import as "clean" as possible, I didn't know what kind of data might already be in his Apple apps (if any).

This way I just have a plain text file that's easy enough to import into Entourage without setting up other apps.

If the solution doesn't really fit here, sorry about that, just thought it might be nice to have a record of what I did in case other people face the problem.
 
Some other ways:

If you still have the Windows PC, install Thunderbird on that, and import your Outlook mails and contacts to that.
Export mail contacts as .csv and then you can use those with AddressBook, and the mails can be used with any other mail that deals with .mbox.

Or some have used Gmail as an intermediate step between Outlook and any Mail application on Mac.

http://macosx.com/forums/mac-os-x-s...3-converting-pst-contacts-using-only-mac.html
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20070712065953608
 
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