transferring outlook email to evolution?

anyone done this?

[Trisha]

I have a new computer with gentoo linux on it and would like to transfer my emails from the old computer in outlook to the new computer in evolution.

I found one site that gives instructions, but I am having some problems with it.

Has anyone else done this? If so, how did you do it? (I asked this over at the gentoo site also, haven't got much help yet, so I thought I would ask over here too, hope that is ok)

[bakedjake]

I've moved between Windows and UNIX clients before with IMAP.

[Trisha]

Oh no, I must be in over my head. I've heard the term IMAP before, but I have no idea what it is. Is it some kind of software?

[bakedjake]

It's a protocol. Most mailservers should support it. Unlike POP3 (the most common mail protocol), it is bidirectional.

[Trisha]

I looked up IMAP and found this: "IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol. It is a method of accessing electronic mail or bulletin board messages that are kept on a (possibly shared) mail server. In other words, it permits a "client" email program to access remote message stores as if they were local. "

That doesn't really sound like what I am looking for, if I understand that definition right. I could have sworn I had heard of a way to transfer email from outlook to evolution a long time ago. I really need to keep those old emails. I don't know if I would have swiched to linux if I had known I wouldn't be able to transfer my email.

I also found this: sourceforge. net/projects/ol2mbox/ but it doesn't look like it has been updated for a long time.

I guess I could always just save the .pst files and put them on the linux computer and just hope that some day I will be able to access them again. Meanwhile, if I need to look up an old email I can do it on my old computer, until it completely dies on me, which may not be too far in the future.

Surely, many people have come across this problem?

[bakedjake]

With IMAP, you simply move messages from your old Windows box to the mail server, then you can move them back to the new machine.

If you're not comfortable with that (used it many times, it works well!), you could try outport: [outport.sourceforge.net...]

I've never used it, YMMV.

[Trisha]

bakedjake - so how do I actually use this imap to move my emails back to the server? This actually sounds like the same thing someone at the gentoo forum suggested but didn't actually call it imap. I'm a little concerned about bandwidth issuese with doing this, but I guess I can just do a few at a time.

I was going to try outport, but had problems getting the software on my computer.

There is apparently another way to do this also, that would be even easier if I could get it to work. You can import outlook emails into mozilla or netscape because they apparently can recognize MS mail format. They can then change it to mbox format which evolution can read, so the mail can then be imported into evolution. Only problem, on my nt machine when I try to import with netscape I get a message that a worm was found on my computer. Could be, I don't know, but the message never pops up any other time.

I saved all my .pst files onto a cd, but can't get mozilla to recognize them on the linux computer, at least not in that format. It seems that since I have all the .pst files on a cd there should be some way to get them directly into mozilla or evolution from that. But I have no idea how.

The Imap thing seems the best bet now.

[bakedjake]

You have to find out if your host (email provider) supports IMAP. Can you do that?

[Trisha]

I emailed my host last night and this is what they said - 'does have IMAP loaded but it is officially not supported. You are limited to 250mb of mail at any given time.'

So I don't know if they will help me do it, if I don't know how. I wonder if that 250mb refers to disk space used at any given time, or bandwidth. Either way, if I use this method, this weekend would be the perfect time, being a holiday.

Another question about it - will the send and received dates get changed? Also, it just occured to me, I keep emails I send out also how could I get those to the new computer this way?

[Trisha]

Anyone else know how to do the IMAP stuff?

[encyclo]

Don't know about the IMAP stuff, but I believe that Eudora for Windows (another mail client) can import Outlook's .PST format files and convert them to mbox format.

Of course, Evolution can read mbox natively, so you can then just move the files accross. That might be another line of attack (Eudora can be downloaded free).

[Trisha]

encyclo - That's another possibility. I'll have to see if I can get Eudora installed easily or not with gentoo.

[Trisha]

encyclo - I can't see where I can get eudora for gentoo. It was also suggested to use thunderbird, but that isn't working either. I can't do it on the linux machine, because apparently it doesn't recognize .pst files by themselves. So I download thunderbird to my nt computer. But that doesn't work either. Several problems. Apparently you need to first bring it into outlook express then to thunderbird, but still you could lose folders and folders within folders. I have tons of old emails all organized like this. Then I would still have to get the files over to the new computer.

I'm starting to think I'd be better off with the IMAP solution again. I still have the concern about the dates though.

Maybe bakedjake is just away for the holiday and can explain it when he gets back.

I'm about ready to just give up though and put up with the fact that I may never be able to get rid of my windows machine.

[claus]

Afaik, you have to convert your outlook mails to the mbox format, and when that's done you can import them.

There are a few ways to do this, one of the easy ones is installing Thunderbird (a mozilla mail client) on your win PC and just asking it to import your mail. Added: I just checked, it will import Outlook as well as Outlook Express

This import will convert all folders to mbox for you. Unless you specify otherwise it will be stored in the folder:

C:\Documents and Settings\(X)\Application Data\Mozilla\Profiles\mail

- where (X) is your windows login name. Folders and subfolders are preserved.

The mbox files that Thunderbird creates will likely have no extension - they will just have the folder names. Actually you'll probably find pairs of files with the folder names - you can safely assume that the larger files are the mbox files.

Perhaps you will need to copy them to some other folder and rename them with the extension ".mbox" before you can import them, i wouldn't know as i don't use evolution.

Thunderbird works on Linux too btw, see, eg. "How to share mail between windows and linux" [texturizer.net...]

---

Here's an Open Source program that will convert OE files (dbx) to mbox (mbx): [people.freenet.de...]

[Trisha]

installing Thunderbird (a mozilla mail client) on your win PC and just asking it to import your mail.

I tried this, and actually got closer to having it work than the previous times I tried. It copied all my folders and subfolders over, but they were all empty.

There's no way I can it convert and then store the email in my c drive. Since it's nt, I've got a tiny c and d drive and great big e drive. When I tried doing this before with netscape it automatically saved everything to my c drive, nearly used up all the space in it and eventually crashed. This time, I was able to find a way in Thunderbird to specify where the account should be, so I put in on my e drive. The folders and subfolders show up there, as they do within Thunderbird, but they are all empty. It listed a bunch of errors too when it was done. Can't remember what they were now, but were something like 'couldn't transfer all of mail'. Got one for each mail folder in Outlook.

[claus]

The folders are empty within thunderbird, but are the files empty on your e-drive?

You should have files with no extension containing your mail in mbox format and some ".msf" files that you can ignore.

If they are empty within thunderbird it might be because your "Local folders" point to a wrong address. Right click, choose "properties" to check, then restart thunderbird.

Possibly, if you've moved the folder location, it's not updated in the file "prefs.js", so you could edit that. The file is in your profiles folder, which on NT should be something like:

C:\Winnt\Profiles\<Windows login/user name>\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\<Profile name>\********.slt\

The asterisks is some cryptic string with letters and numbers in it.

Or, perhaps you've changed the location of your profile folder as well as the local folder - the solution is still to edit "prefs.js"

For example, replace all instances of
"C:\\Documents and Settings\\UserName\\Application Data\\Thunderbird\\Profiles\\default\\********.slt"
(typical default profile location on Windows XP) with
"C:\\NewLocation\\NewProfile\\********.slt" (the new profile location).
When finished, save the prefs.js file.

Source: Thunderbird FAQ [kb.mozillazine.org]

One word of caution: You will see two rows of text whenever a folder is mentioned, like this:

user_pref("mail.server.server1.directory", "E:\\thunderbird-mail\\mail-account");
user_pref("mail.server.server1.directory-rel", "[ProfD]../../../mail-account");

As you edit the first line, you should remember to delete the second line, not edit it. [ProfD] is a relative path to the first line, and it will be (re)generated by Thunderbird automatically when you restart.

Another point that might cause trouble is if you've used special characters in folder names (/ , ; : etc.) you should rename those. possibly folders with duplicate names can cause some confusion as well.

I hope some of this helps.

[Trisha]

They are empty on my e drive, and in thunderbird when I try to click on a folder - the hour glass thing pops up and just kind of hangs there.

I changed my 'local folders' location to a folder on my e drive, to keep it from saving everything on my small c drive. I'll check that prefs.js file tomorrow. (The weather was actually nice here yesterday and again today - it stopped raining - and my husband is off work, so I spent most of yesterday outside, most likely will today too.)

[Trisha]

I finally got my email swiched over, kind of anyway. It took a lot of work. And I lost most of my attachments and some emails - ones that were form mails sent to me from some of my sites are now completely blank.

First, I moved them from outlook to outlook express. I read that this would keep you from losing attachments, but I still lost many of mine anyway.

Then, I moved them from outlook express to thunderbird (still on the pc). All the moving around within my pc (Nt) caused my c drive to get totally full, at one point it got down to 3 something mb, then filled up completely.

then I burned the files to a cd and brought them to my new linux computer. Moving them back into thunderbird wasn't easy, nor was moving them into evolution either. All the folders and subfolders within them got dissociated from each other, so I had a lot to sort out afterward.

Hopefully, I will be able to always use mbox format from now on and will never have to do this again. And even better, maybe someday I'll find some software to convert .pst to mbox right on my linux computer. (Since I still have them saved that way too)

Thanks for all the help and suggestions!

[claus]

>> I lost most of my attachments

I had this Thunderbird bug as well. I don't know if it should really be considered a bug though.

What happens is that Thunderbird will not know if your message has an attachment until you open that message. So messages you get with attachments will not show the attachment icon, until you open them or preview them in the preview pane.

I did some serious previewing of a few thousand emails when i made the switch (for the same reason). I didn't lose any attachments, they were just hidden (no icon in the folder).

Still, that was a good occasion for a little cleanup&housekeeping. It made me decide to delete several hundred emails that i really should have deleted long ago ;)

[Trisha]

I wish I would have known about viewing them in thunderbird first. All my imported emails are still in thunderbird, so I guess I can always go back there and check an attachment.

Don't know why some of the mail from forms shows up blank though. Many of those I will need to go back to my windows machine for a long time with to follow up with.

I did some housecleaning with my email too, needed to be done.