Windows 7: Windows Mail

Yes, getting your Windows Mail messages over to Thunderbird is a pain, very poor.
Thunderbird definitely needs updating to include many more email options in their import wizard, I can’t understand why they haven’t done that bye now.
I had to bite the bullet and pay for the Fookes Aid4Mail software, it can transfer messages to and from loads of different email clients. http://www.aid4mail.com/
It works well but I did have to contact support, which was excellent.

However it is possible to export your addresses from Windows Mail to Thunderbird.
In Windows Mail go to - File, Export, Windows Contacts, choose CSV, then choose where to save them, I put them on my desktop.
Next open Thunderbird and go to Tools, Import, choose address books, choose Text file, if you’ve saved the Text file on your desktop carry on from there.

The best email client that I have found for the greatest amount of email clients in it’s import wizard is eM Client www.emclient.com
It can import Windows Mail and Windows Live Mail. Have look and see what you think.
It’s a fairly new email client and they have said they want to make it the best email client in the world. If it had a built in back up and the learning Bayesian spam filter it could be the best, even if you have to pay for those extra accounts. The free version only allows one account!

OK I found an add-on that allowed me to import my mail from windows mail.
It is here. https://nic-nac-project.org/~kaosmos/mboximport-en.html They make it look really complicated but you really only need to read the first quarter of the page, down to "- restart Thunderbird." Then you do need to know where Windows Mail's store folder is cause you have to find it to import from it. I had moved mine from its default location so it was easy to find.

SO FAR SO GOOD

tangentjohn
Looks like your busy doing alot of research, thanks for all the GREAT info.......... Its appreciated. I finally transferred everything over from Windows Vista Mail to Windows 7 Live mail, FORCED myself to use it. and it is not so bad but there are alot of quirks they need to fix up, like sending emails to certain contacts and stuff... That is a big problem I think.. Yes you can set up categories and add certain contacts however if you send to that certain category, you can't pick from certain categories to send the email to. When you have alot of contacts this is a big problem. Just another thing to research and try to do a work around...

Thanks again for all the research your doing

For those who wish to use Thunderbird for their email client and emulate Winmail, you can do so with a little work. I used Winmail as a POP3 client with my messages saved to various folders on the local computer. TB out of the box will try to install itself as a IMAP client which basicly maps the server email folders to the local machine - the messages still reside on the server. If you create folders, they to reside on the server unless you specifically create them as local folders. To do TB with POP3 you need to install manually. As soon as you start the install, you will be asked for your user name/email address and the "wizard" will automatically contact the server and establish a IMAP account. You have to stop the wizard before it can get finished. As soon as it starts click the "stop" button. Then click the manual setup button and go into the tabs and manually set the program for POP3, and giving your email server address, etc. You need to set the SMTP server as well for the outgoing mail. The data is same as for the WINmail accounts tab.

After you get connected (be sure to select the option to let you manually ask to get your mail instead of the default of getting mail automatically when TB starts so you can import all the locally saved old messages first) you can import the contact/address book from winmail. You need to save it from winmail in the comma delimlted form first in a folder where you can find it again or to the desktop.

Then download and install the import/export addon tool for TB here:
ImportExportTools

This tool will allow you to import all your folders and saved emails from the Winmail folder under your users directory.

I got all my saved emails complete with attachments back under TB without any problems but they are saved under the Inbox folder which you have to expand in order to see them.

Good luck!

Thanks to Poppa Bear I got Windows Mail for Windows 7 Pro.
My question now is this: Is there any way to add the "identities", that used to be in Outlook Express and disapperared in Windows Mail.
If someone knows how to intalled, please, let me know.

I have been experiencing win mail crashing every time I compact. Is there a way to fix this?

install win mail again. See intructions to uninstall and reinstall.

What's the simplest fix after the SP1 bug?

thx

bob

Where can I find the instructions on uninstalling and reinstalling win mail?

Don't know the simplest since I'm using WLM 2009 but there is a post about SP1 here: THE FIX for Windows mail after the SP1 Update