Even with Office running quite well on Leopard through VMware Fusion most of you switchers will still not want to depend on the messaging solution from Microsoft on your Cupertino OS. But how would the required migration work for all the emails from the past? There is no export feature in Outlook that would create anything meaningful to Apple Mail. Obviously for pure IMAP (or Zimbra connector) users as I am, it is no issue, as you just point your new client towards the right ports of your server and off you go. But I’m also an offline user as a POP3 user would be when it comes to mail archives. My thousands of received but also sent messages are nicely archived in separate local folders in Outlook format for each of the past years.
The answer to the Outlook to Mail migration question is: Thunderbird.
Simply install Thunderbird on your Windows environment next to Outlook and agree to all import from Outlook suggestions you will get during setup. Thunderbird will store online as well as offline content in the local application data folder in your home directory.
C:\Documents and Settings\[USER]\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\[PROFILE]\Mail\..
The .msf and the corresponding files that do not have an ending are what you need to move over to your Mac. Mail.app has an “Import Mailboxes…” feature that you can use to include them into your local mail.app setup.
During my own migration I realized that not all files (each representing one folder from Outlook) were offered for import. This seems to be file size related. The solution here is to split them into items below 1 GB in Thunderbird before moving them over to the Mac. Note, if you split e.g. a 1.2GB file into two 600MB files you have to compact them before moving, otherwise the file size doesn’t change.
This way I successfully migrated 18’972 emails from Microsoft Outlook on Windows to Apple Mail on OS X Leopard. All available at the tip of my finger through spotlight of course.
{ 1 trackback }
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Should we all stop and wonder about the necessity of keeping almost 19,000 emails in your e-mail program? One wonders if this user has ever heard of the phrase,
‘e-mail maintenance’. :^D
Great blog, subscribed to your rss feed. Thanks.
Thanks a lot for the tip. I will try to do everything today!
Addressed to Dru,
Having had email since 1991, I probably have more email than 13,500. I toss everything that isn’t valuable but mail folders are the most efficient way for me to file all this information. With Apple’s mail the method got even better, being able to search it all quickly makes all that data more useful. I’m sure I could delete 10% of my emails, but reading 20,000 emails to try to save a few kb is not my idea of a great Saturday.
As a friendly poke, I’d guess you are a system admin since they seem to have a low regard for users data.
The system admin at our work is suggesting to print all the emails then delete them from our mail programs. Sure, because storing and searching thousands of pounds of paper is better than buying a couple of harddrives. His next suggestion is to print them to PDF and store them in a folder structure. Why I ask? It won’t save space, and is poorly indexed on our windows server making searching near useless.
Thanks Ken. This is about my understanding. Best case I do nothing with my emails from the past. Worst case I have a very affordable and good enough solution to find info from the past that could become relevant one day (has already very often). When is sysadmin day again? ;)
Your article was very attention grabbing and was just what I was searching for. jeremy
Great tip, I transferred several years os e-mail correspondence in 10 minutes tops!
Thanks
Hi There,
Could you make the explanation on transferring the mail a little easier to understand. I have downloaded thunderbird and allowed the import to happen but I am unsure of what to do next.? Do I start my MAC and then what? How do I importmy email from thunderbird to MAC mail?
Thanks Adrian
During the Thunderbird installation you will want to confirm the request to import Outlook settings. This will “convert” your Outlook data into Thunderbird data. This information is stored in C:\Documents and Settings\[USER]\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\[PROFILE]\Mail\.. and needs to be copied (take a USB stick of appropriate size if you have) to your Mac. On your Mac start Mail and from the menu on the top select File… Import Mailboxes… This feature will allow you to select the files that Thunderbird produced for you and they will become Mac Mail data. Hope this helps.
just seen this on twitter cheers for the info.
Good tip, I would just like to add that you will need to change file options in XP to show hidden files/folders as Thunderbird folders are hidden by default. Good and simple way to expert to Mail!
Thanks for sharing….
I have about 15-16 gb of emails stacked into 4-5 pst files which again have many folders in them.
I get an error when i import the mails in thunderbird.
How big should the size of each folder be max
Here i found complete method with screenshots
http://www.trickyways.com/2010/08/how-to-transfer-emails-from-outlook-to-apple-mail/