New
#11
Outlook Express to Windows Live Mail
I've just spent the last five days researching how to import orphan Outlook Express .dbx folders (and the unseen email messages in them) from a backup drive from an XP machine to to WLM (and Thunderbird) on a 64-bit Win 7 machine, so I think I can be of some assistance on the first steps. The Outlook Express .dbx files by themselves are unusable until they have been reconstituted within the Outlook Express program. The trick is to create empty folder names in Outlook Express on any XP machine that exactly match the names of the .dbx files containing the messages you want to import into Thunderbird or WLM. For example, if you have .dbx file named Jill's Music.dbx, you'd create a folder named Jill's Music within Outlook Express. You'll need to click on each folder after it has been created; otherwise, the .dbx file will not be created in the message store. Shut down Outlook Express, then copy the .dbx files containing your messages to the folder that contains the new empty .dbx files, i.e., overwrite the empty files with your .dbx files containing your email messages. (You can search the internet on how to find the message store location. The trick there is to change the default Windows option to show hidden files; otherwise, often you won't be able to see the folder in Explorer.) When you fire up Outlook Express, all your folders and messages will be present. When you download and install WLM on the XP machine, it'll automatically import all the Outlook Express folders and messages. (Note: my first intention was to import into Thunderbird from Outlook Express using the above approach, but apparently Thunderbird can't handle importing large numbers of messages -- it just grinds away for hours w/out discernable progress. It will work with small numbers of messages, however.) My next step, which I haven't yet done, is transfer the WLM files to the Win 7 machine. I'll let you know how that goes.