From Outlook 2002 to Windows (Live) Mail

[mfrazier]

Please bear with me. I have done some research on this already and have run
into something I can't find any documentation for.

I'm trying to transfer mail messages from Outlook 2002 on a desktop running
XP Pro to Windows (Live) Mail on a laptop running Vista.

Here's what I've done. I've imported the Outlook messages into OE6, copied
the OE6 message folder onto a portable drive, moved the portable drive to the
laptop, and imported using Mail. It worked a little. Mostly it didn't.

Of all the dbx folders in the copied OE6 message folder, Mail recognized
only three as suitable for import: Inbox, Sent & just one of the many
remaining subfolders. None of the remaining dbx folders -- all of which had
been created by importing from Outlook -- were recognized.

I went back to the desktop, which still contained the imported messages
(Outlook -> OE6), and I noticed that, despite the fact that some of the
newly-created subfolders contained hundreds of messages, they were
nevertheless considerably smaller than they should be -- as if the importing
process did not actually import the messages at all, but pointers back to the
original pst files -- or perhaps they imported them in compressed form. I
have no idea, really. I'm just sure they're much smaller than they ought to
be.

I can access the messages themselves from within OE6 just fine.

Any ideas?

Note some of the messages imported from Outlook had been archived, but I
restored them prior to import.

Thanks for any help you can give.

 

[Vince Averello [MVP - Outlook]]

Have you checked with the OE newsgroups for possible issues since the
message seem to have made it from Outlook to OE fine. It's the next hop that
seems to be the source of your troubles.

 

[VanguardLH]

...

I'm trying to transfer mail messages from Outlook 2002 on a desktop
running
XP Pro to Windows (Live) Mail on a laptop running Vista.

Here's what I've done. I've imported the Outlook messages into OE6,
copied
the OE6 message folder onto a portable drive, moved the portable drive
to the
laptop, and imported using Mail. It worked a little. Mostly it didn't.

Most likely you forgot to select from WHICH folders in the OEX message
store folder that would get imported. I did the same thing, too, and
got only a couple e-mails imported into WLM (from OE6 after importing
them from OE6 on the same host as where Outlook must be installed since
the import for OE6 uses MAPI to retrieve the items because it cannot
directly read the .pst file). Make sure during the import in WLM to
select which folders to import from. Use the Ctrl key to select
multiple folders from the OE6 message store folder. Also, copy the
entire OE6 message store folder, not just what .dbx files you think you
need for some folders. For example, although not a folder within OE6,
the folders.dbx file provides the data for the folder hierarchy within
OE6.

Before you imported into WLM, did you check that the import into OE6
worked first? Were all your expected e-mails in OE6 after importing
from Outlook into OE6?

Of all the dbx folders in the copied OE6 message folder, Mail
recognized
only three as suitable for import: Inbox, Sent & just one of the many
remaining subfolders. None of the remaining dbx folders -- all of
which had
been created by importing from Outlook -- were recognized.

Sounds like the import into OE6 from Outlook did not work. The
folders.dbx file lists the hierarchy of the folders within OE and their
use.

I went back to the desktop, which still contained the imported
messages
(Outlook -> OE6), and I noticed that, despite the fact that some of
the
newly-created subfolders contained hundreds of messages, they were
nevertheless considerably smaller than they should be -- as if the
importing
process did not actually import the messages at all, but pointers back
to the
original pst files -- or perhaps they imported them in compressed
form. I
have no idea, really. I'm just sure they're much smaller than they
ought to
be.

I can access the messages themselves from within OE6 just fine.

Okay, so from a random sampling of hundreds of messages, the ones you
looked at were complete after being imported into OE6, so the problem
doesn't look to be the import from Outlook to OE6 but instead for the
import from OE6 to WLM.

Was OE6 running when you did the import into WLM? Make sure OE is not
running (check Task Manager to ensure there is no msimn.exe process).
Otherwise, OE will have a handle on the .dbx files that will make
accessing them by another process impossible or fallible. The import
into WLM of the OE message store needs to open those files to read them
and that means no other process can have a concurrent open handle on
those same files.

If importing doesn't work into WLM, both OE and WLM use EML for the
format structure within an e-mail. While I have tried it, you should be
able to drag e-mails out of OE6 onto, say, your desktop or a temp folder
in Windows Explorer and then drag those .eml files from that
intermediary location into whatever folder you want in WLM. Basically
you're doing a drag-n-drop (out of OE) and drag-n-drop (into WLM)
operation. In past posts, some users have complained that the Import
function is incomplete. It could be as mentioned above where they
forgot to select the folders in the OE message store when using WLM's
import function. Maybe there is a problem in the import function so the
double drag-n-drop method should work.

Note some of the messages imported from Outlook had been archived, but
I
restored them prior to import.

As long as you saw those unarchived messages in OE6 then they are there
to import into WLM.