Just bought an Apple, how do I convert my mail
 

Hi folks,

I just bought a power book, switching over form windows. I use outlook express and have thousands of emails that I simply can't lose.

From what I've read to migrate that stuff into entourage I'd need to have outlook express installed on the powerbook but there doesn't seem to be an os X version.

What's me end around here? Will entourage convert the .dbx files without outlook express installed? I've read about the .macmail way but that seems like a train wreck considering how much email I have. The .dbx files are something like 700MB.

thanks

Welcome to the Mac and to these forums!

Hope you find both fun and interesting :)

Anyway, bit of a non-positive post here, but hopefully you'll be able to take some good out of it...

In my experience, the surest way to do this is to set up an IMAP server on your mac, and use that to copy your emails across. There are numerous posts on the main site on how to do that - I'll be happy to expand if you need more help.

The real problem, here, is that Outlook on the PC is nothing whatsoever like Entourage or Outlook Express on the Mac. They are both totally different apps, with different histories and different backends. This means that, fundamentally, there's no reason for them to employ the same mailbox structure, and they don't.

Unsurprisingly, Microsoft isn't falling over itself in its efforts to make the transition to other mail clients (particularly Mac-based ones) any easier or smoother.

In theory, I believe that you can export mail etc from Outlook/PC in various "standard" spreadsheet formats, but I don't know how well those handle attachments.

If anyone has any more positive suggestions, I'd love to hear them too - this is an operation I end up having to do fairly regularly ;)

yeah, I could probably use a bit more guidance on this. a link maybe to the mail site. I backed in here from google. just to be clear though, I'm trying to import outlook express. I've read about the outlook woes.

I have no experience with this, but a quick google search shows that there are several dbx converter programs, including some that convert to UNIX-standard mbox format from which you should be able to import into your OS X mail client. (There are lots of AppleScript and other solutions that run on OS X for converting between various UNIX and Mac mail formats.)

move2mac looks interesting:

http://www.apple.com/switch/howto/move2mac/

It says it will convert your Windows Outlook Express files to Apple Mail. Once in Apple mail they can be converted to Entourage fairly easily. The product may help you out with other conversion chores as well.

Thunderbird
 

Or, if you don't feel like spending $50 just to migrate your e-mail, the Mozilla Thunderbird e-mail program will import OE mailboxes. From Thunderbird, you can then export them out in the standard .mbox format, which Entourage happily recognizes.

well that mozilla way seems better than $50.

I downloladed and imported my mail to mozilla. It's taking some time to build summaries for each folder.

Where are the mozilla mail files I need to export/copy to move over to the powerbook. I can't seem to locate them.

thanks for all the help

ah, and I know this is a preference thing, but what's the best email program to use on the mac? I read some bad things about entourage so since this is an entourage forum maybe it's a good place to ask. I pretty much hated outlook and always went back to outlook express. Mozilla, after playing with it all morning seems ok, though there's a bit too many folders for my tastes. I prefer all my accounts going into one inbox.

I prefer Apple's Mail app to many other email clients for its integration with the rest of the OS and its ease of use -- but yes, it is all your opinion. Try as many as you like, and then stick with what you find intuitive.

Welcome to the Mac community!

that's pretty much what I figured. seems confirmed by reading about mac's mail app. I assume Mozilla is easily imported into the mac app (which is called what by the way?)?

Paul Berkowitz has developed several applications and scripts which might be useful for migrating fron OE to Entourage. They can be found at ScriptBuilders, where you'll also find contact info. Paul is an excellent developer and and he's an expert on Entourage and Outlook Express.

-- Rob

Apple's email client is simply called Mail or Mail.app It's my email client of choice as well... it does everything I want to do and it's so simple (at least I find it to be).

Mail is very good, I must agree... Its liter that most big mail apps such as Entourage... And very nice junk mail filter too !
I'd just like to know what kind of mail box you'll be accessing. IMAP or POP ?

my mailboxes are pop

Eudora is the one for me. I really don't understand why anyone would use anything else.

I agree. I've switched back and forth and continue with Mac Mail.

The open dbx files and inbox repair tool has prompted you a path of the Outlook Express files' storage. And now save the damaged dbx files in the safe folder, they can be useful.

It is very simple. Once you have all your message in outlook express.( I need to export to outlook express from outlook first) Just drap and drop all message you want to move {I mean drap & Drop it} into a folder. You will find all messages from outlook express become a files inside that folder. Copy or move the folder with all your message to Mac. Open Entourage and drap and drop all file under that folder to the inbox or any folder in Entourage

Since I have both MS Office 2003 for PC and MS Office 2004 for Mac. I got hotline support from MS and this method is from MS Support direct and it work for me. I move 300m mail from outlook express to entourage in a few seconds only.

One thing:- All date will change to the time you drop into Entourage. If it is important to you on the date. It might not work for you.:)

Migrating from Outlook Express and/or Outlook to Mac
 

I just bought a Mac myself recently and was struggling to figure out how to transfer my PC mail files (Outlook Express and Outlook) to the Mac. It took a lot of searching to find a fairly simple solution.

Outlook to Mac (www.littlemachines.com) provided a workable solution that would migrate both platforms over relatively easily, for only 10 bucks! Outlook migration is straightforward. All you do is follow the instructions, point and click, and it works.

For Outlook Express, it won't transport the mail files directly. What I did is first cleared everything out of my Outlook folder (.pst file). In other words, I deleted what was there (after backing it up first of course). I then imported the Outlook Express data into Outlook. I then used Outlook to Mac to convert it to the required data format.

In both cases, I saved my translated data to an external hard drive. I then imported the data into Mail and/or Entourage as desired.

Migration to Mac - Outlook and Outlook Express
 

Just a follow-up on my previous post.

Outlook to Mac (O2M) worked very well at converting my Outlook and Outlook Express (OE) email messages into an .mbox format that was readable by Mac Mail. The only quirk with migrating my Outlook and Outlook Express files to iMail was that it appended the prefix "Personal" to my folder names. I had to go through by hand to remove this prefix one folder at a time, although Mac's Automator feature might also be able to do it easier and faster.

The challenge came when trying to import messages and data from Outlook 2000 running on the PC into Entourage 2004 (Microsoft's version of Outlook for the Mac). I presume newer Outlook versions on the PC will also encourter similar issues. There was no easy or direct way to import the O2M-converted data into Entourage via any Import command. So:

1. For Mail messages from Outlook PC to Entourage:

I dragged and dropped the O2M .mbox files directly into the Mail window of Entourage (into the pane where the inbox and other mailboxes show).

If you have a lot of messages, it may appear that Entourage is freezing on you and not responding. This was normal in my experience, and simply the result of Entourage taking a very long time to copy/paste messages. I had between 5000 and 10000 messages to import this way, and it took about 2 - 3 hours for it to fully process (running a MacBook Pro, 2.0 Ghz, 1 GB RAM). None of my other Mac programs were affected or frozen during this time, only Entourage was. Again, it imported the messages with "Personal" as a prefix to each folder, but, that's the price you pay leaving the PC world.

2. Importing Contacts from Outlook into Entourage:

Tthere is no direct way to import Contacts from the PC into Entourage even though O2M will convert the files for you into a readable format.

So, again, I simply copy/pasted (drag and dropped) all my O2M-converted contact data into one of the Address Book panes of Entourage. Again, it took some time (about 5 minutes), and Entourage appeared to freeze, but at least it worked.

Note: most of the data will be preserved, although I did see some addresses and names that either got truncated, or had the space between first and last names removed.

3. Importing Calendar Items from Outlook into Entourage:

O2M converts the calendars and events into a .ics format. Of course, Microsoft building the wonderful products it does, allows no direct means of importing such converted and pre-converted files into the Mac version of their same product.

So, by trial and error discovery, you copy/paste about 40-50 of the .ics files into a temporary folder on your desktop. Do this using temporary folders of 40-50 files until you've made copies of all the calendar events.

Then, DOING THIS PROCESS FOR ONLY ONE FOLDER AT A TIME, select all the calendar items in one of the temporary folders (ctrl-A). Either right-click or select "Opens with" and select "Entourage". Entourage will open EACH AND EVERY calendar event in its standard calendar-entry view. When prompted for "open event or series", select "series".

Entourage will open each .ics file, each of which contains a day's-worth of calendar events. You then simply close each open event one at a time, dismiss the alarms as they arise, and presto, they are entered into Entourage. Continue the process until you are either complete, or go insane.

WARNING: If you copy all the .ics files into a single folder and choose "select all" - "open with Entourage", that's exactly what it will do. It will completely clog the processor and memory of your computer in about 10 minutes as it opens each and every calendar event and alarm. You can force quit Entourage if this happens. Calendar events that were opened prior to the force-quit will be entered into Entourage.

4. Importing Notes and Tasks from Outlook into Entourage:

If it were easy, there wouldn't be a need for Macs now, would there?

There was no direct import feature via O2M and/or Entourage that would allow the direct import of PC-based note- and task-files from Outlook into entourage. Instead, I was forced to enter by hand, one at a time, the tasks I had into Entourage (I only had a few so it was no big deal).

For the Notes, I opened each of them one at a time and copy/pasted them into an MS Word file. I then mailed that MS Word file to myself from my PC and created new notes by copy/pasting the info from the MS Word file into Entourage's notes.

I've not tried either yet, but there is sync software out there to allow you to maintain communication and synchronisation between your iMail, iCal and Entourage platforms once you make it this far. See the links below for more details:

http://www.pocketmac.net/products/gobetween/indexg.html and
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/15013


After all that, I'm happy to say that the 1-2 day's worth of trial and effort has been more than worthwhile to enter a Windowless world for a breath of fresh air. :)

Here's Microsoft's Recommendation
 

Hi Folks:

I had the same issue over the weekend, and called MS to see what they could do. For 1.5 hours, I had the MS Mac Office people and the MS Win Office people on a 3-way, and here's what they recommended: (I should note that they had no idea of what to do at first. Apparently it isn't something they have a "solution" for).

After much a-do, the MS Mac person suggested that I

a) simply click and drag my outlook inbox messages into a folder on my PC desktop (eg. called "inbox")

b) drag that folder onto an external drive on my PC,

c) transfer the external drive to my Mac

d) drag the messages into the entourage inbox.

To my shock, it actually WORKed for my outlook inbox. It didn't work for transferring any "sent" box messages.

For contacts...saving outlook contacts as a .csv file and then importing them into Entourage is fairly simple. Except that you have to go through a fairly tedious effort to match outlook's fieldnames with entourage's field names at one point in the process.

Still haven't figured out how to transfer my sent messages.