Mail Trouble

June 14, 2010 2:29 AM

How can I retrieve messages from Outlook Express and transfer them to Outlook 2007? Complications inside.

My dad was running Outlook Express on an old Windows 98 box that used to be mine. I got him a new machine running Windows 7 and Outlook 2007. The old machine was in the process of dying and I was not able to save and export his old messages - it simply wouldn't let me even though I'd done it before. Options which should have been there were greyed out. Much swearing ensued.

We were able to copy the old harddrive onto an external drive before the old machine ground to a halt but I can't seem to find a way to import the mail (which is in there somewhere) into Outlook 2007. I've found instructions to import the Address Book (*.wab files) which works fine. But I can't seem to find anything to do the same with the mail.

I can find the mail folders on the old drive copy (*.dbx files) but I can neither transfer the folders nor retrieve the mail inside. The Outlook 2007 import functions don't seem to let me specify an particular folder it should import from and I'm starting to loose my temper.

Short of performing necromancy on the old machine, emailing myself all the old mails, saving and backing up onto a thumb-drive and then importing them onto the new machine....how can I get Dad's old mail back?? (or at least strip the photo's and/or email addresses?)

posted by ninazer0 to computers & internet (6 answers total)

Did you try this?
posted by devnull at 2:47 AM on June 14, 2010

We tried something like that but the problem was that the import function in Outlook 2007 allowed us to set preference for OE6 files but DIDN'T allow us to specify a directory. Copying stuff into various random locations (desktop, documents etc) didn't work either. I'm assuming that this is some weirdness associated with Outlook 07 and Win7???
posted by ninazer0 at 3:00 AM on June 14, 2010

Also, further to my earlier comment Windows Mail isn't included in Windows 7, nor is Outlook Express, hence my installation of Outlook 2007.
posted by ninazer0 at 3:03 AM on June 14, 2010

It's not the answer you want (hopefully someone else will give that), but I would import them anywhere else, then export them to a format your dad's mail program likes.
posted by devnull at 3:22 AM on June 14, 2010

Also not the ideal answer, but you could import them into an install of Outlook Express, set up his email address in Outlook Express as an IMAP account, and then drag'n'drop all the emails into the inbox of the IMAP account (effectively putting them back on the server). Then set up his account in Outlook, and they'll all download again.
posted by springbound at 4:11 AM on June 14, 2010

I vaguely remember dealing with this before. I think that you can install Thunderbird and on the first run, have Thunderbird transfer the data from Outlook Express. Then in Thunderbird you have a method to export it in a manner that Outlook 2007 can handle.
There is also this MS KB Article.
posted by msbutah at 10:24 AM on June 14, 2010