Comments on: Can mail be exported from Apple's email on OSX to a Windows XP box running Microsoft Outlook?

Question: Can mail be exported from Apple's email on OSX to a Windows XP box running Microsoft Outlook?

Macboy — Wed, 25 Feb 2004 09:30:06 -0800

Can mail be exported from Apple's email on OSX to a Windows XP box running Microsoft Outlook?

By: ascullion

ascullion — Wed, 25 Feb 2004 09:36:04 -0800

If nothing else, if you have an IMAP server, you could just move your mail onto it, then take it from the server onto the other machine..

By: jazzkat11

jazzkat11 — Wed, 25 Feb 2004 09:41:07 -0800

Macboy - From apple mail you can export .mbox files, which I believe can be imported by outlook. You might want to run a test first - sometimes getting the inclusion of subfolders under your inbox can be tricky.

By: adamrice

adamrice — Wed, 25 Feb 2004 11:27:46 -0800

Actually, you don't need to export mbox files from Mail.app--that's the native file format for it. Just navigate to ~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes. Just copy them over.

I'd be surprised if Outlook couldn't swallow them.

By: fvw

fvw — Wed, 25 Feb 2004 11:41:26 -0800

the subfolders will at least get squashed into the main inbox, as mbox files don't support subfolders (or folders, for that matter. It's just mail messages concatted, with "From" lines used as separators (not the from headers but real from lines)).

By: Macboy

Macboy — Wed, 25 Feb 2004 12:31:59 -0800

Outlook isn't swallowing... Other ideas?

By: subgenius

subgenius — Wed, 25 Feb 2004 12:59:31 -0800

I think the Apple Mail mailbox files are sort of confusing. I had similar problems, and finally realized that those Apple Mail mailbox files are packages, which contain lots of metadata in addition to the mbox. If you open the package, I think you can drag out the mbox and import it normally into mail applications that support that format.

By: brool

brool — Wed, 25 Feb 2004 14:32:12 -0800

I haven't tried this, but — does Outlook import Eudora files, like Outlook Express? If so, get Eudora (or an earlier version), import the .mbox files into Eudora, go into Outlook and import the Eudora files. The second link above also has more information on converting to/from various formats via Eudora. Good luck.