Email roundtrip

first posted by Laurent Sep 6,2005 here http://www.ztw3.com/archive/019/archive.cgi?read=69651

I've been trying Thunderbird for the last few weeks (again). This is a nice piece of software and the interface is lean. However, I decided to switch back to Outlook for a number of pratical reasons, notably the lack of complete Palm support by Thunderbird, lack of agenda (Sunbird is still experimental), the difficulty to set the portable edition of Thunderbird as default email client, and the fact that Outlook can integrate Antidote (an advanced French grammar checker) while Thunderbird can't.

I've successfully imported and exported all my emails from Outlook to Thunderbird anbd back to Outlook, but I had to do some research. As most people know, Outlook is well-known for its lack of good export and import filters, while Thunderbird has a clumsy import feature and no mass-export one. The trick is to use Outlook Express as a "transit client" which has better import/export features and two additionnal freeware.

Here is the procedure:

Outlook to Thunderbird.

1. Having Outlook alreay installed on the computer, open Outlook Express and use File|Import messages from Outlook.
2. Locate Outlook Express subdirs and dbx files. One Dbx per mail folder. The directory is normally here: $Userprofile\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{A9386D51-BE1E-46CE-BD08-67E36429DC81}\Microsoft\Outlook Express\. Then use ((http://people.freenet.de/ukrebs/dbxconv.html|dbxconv) to convert all dbx files to mbox files. (command line: dbxconv *.dbx). Dbxconv is smarter than Outlook Express in converting since emails with same sender/subject aren't overwritten as OE does.
3. Move all newly created *.mbx files under Thunderbird Profile|Mail|Local Folders, removing the mbx extension in the process. Open Thunderbird. That's it.

Thunderbird to Outlook

1. You need IMAPSizehttp://www.broobles.com/imapsize" class="wiki wikinew">?. Install it, run it and go to Tools|mbox2eml.
2. For each Thunderbird email folder/file (inbox, Outbox, etc.), assign a temporary directory. Then launch the conversion process.
3. Launch Outlook Express. Open Windows Explorer. In turn, open each temporary directory one after another, Select-All eml messages and drag them to the appropriate Outlook Express folder.
4. Once all messages have been transfered, use File|Export feature from Outlook Express (provided your Outlook client is already installed on the computer). Outlook Express is much better to export messages to Outlook than Outlook is to import messages from Outlook Express.

5. Open Outlook. Your messages have been converted.

Foxmail

If you use Foxmail, there is also an utility to convert mbox files to the *.box format and vice-versa. See http://foxmail.free.fr/www/news.php?id=114. You need VB6 runtimes.

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