Moving Outlook 2010

[emueyes]

Hi all

This topic seems to have been overcooked already, but after sampling about 5 years worth of chefs tips, I'm still feeling very unsatisfied.

I want to transfer the data - email, contacts, calendar and accounts for both gmail and my ISP - from one system to another (I built a new computer, this one has a nasty habit of going off.) I don't use/want stationery etc

I'm using Outlook 2010 64bit, and Windows 7 64bit SP1 on both systems.

Does or does not the Easy Transfer tool do this for me? I have read that it will, or won't. I've also read insanely convoluted procedures to move the required files around and get Outlook to recognise them properly. I don't think it helps that Outlook keeps its files in (at least) two different places, %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Outlook Files and %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

A definitive answer would be very helpful. I haven't even finished building the new machine yet, so having or not having started Outlook isn't an issue. I just want it to work.

Rob

 

[richnrockville]

Rob, I have successfully copied the outlook 2010 files that contain the emails, calendars, contacts and notes to a new computer. I setup the new computer with the same user name. Installed office 2010 and then went into outlook and setup the email, with dummy data. Then closed outlook and found where the files were located and then copied the .ost/psd files from the old computer into and overwrote the new outlook files.
It worked fine. Everything was there when I then brought up outlook 2010.

Give it a shot. Nothing to lose but time..
Rich

 

[emueyes]

And what a waste of time! I tried just copying all the files to the new system, and got nowhere.

There are lots of instructions warning against using the Data Migration tool, including some from Microsoft, so I followed Microsoft's own instructions from

Move Outlook information to another computer that has Outlook 2010 installed - Outlook - Office.com

and the new install didn't want to recognise the old data files at all. I now have files such as [email protected] and Robert@xyz(1). I had 4 accounts so that means more files.

The basis of this is to create new accounts for each of the old ones, then have them copy data from the old pst files. That didn't work though, there seemed to be no option for that although the page referenced above said there should be.

Now, I'm pretty good at following instructions. In previous lifetimes I have masqueraded as an HP-UX then Xenix SA, part time writer of dBase (showing my age, and I don't need to prove myself) but this whole mess isn't very good, at all.

I actually had use of their execrable PIA a while ago, to get all of my contacts out of Outlook and stored safely in vcf format (in one go, not hundreds of times, as Outlook would have us do). That API in miserable, perhaps there are unhappy people on the Outlook team.

The only way this worked at all was that the servers I use use IMAP, so my file copying was redundant.

Might I make a suggestion, to anyone who cares, that an easy and functional "Outlook Migration Tool" would be alone in a market with a high demand.

Bad Microsoft.

Google gave gone to a lot of effort making data migration easy, and now I have a tablet it's getting used more and more.

 

[richnrockville]

And what a waste of time! I tried just copying all the files to the new system, and got nowhere.

.......
The only way this worked at all was that the servers I use use IMAP, so my file copying was redundant.

Might I make a suggestion, to anyone who cares, that an easy and functional "Outlook Migration Tool" would be alone in a market with a high demand.

Bad Microsoft.

Google gave gone to a lot of effort making data migration easy, and now I have a tablet it's getting used more and more.

Imap is much different from pop, If you had said that your email was using imap, then I would have responded differently.

IMAP would have transfered all of your email to your new installation if you had set the email and user up differently.

Copying the calendar,contacts and notes would have been easy as the export on the old machine can be retrieved on the new installation.

But, if your working. great.

Sorry to not have been able to recognize that you were using imap.

Rich

 

[alirezanasibi]

still interested in this topic, emueyes?

 

[emueyes]

Yeah, I'm up and running, syncing calendar information with my Android tablet, and generally happy with everything. Outlook remains the mail client of choice, I tried a few alternatives, but they just don't work as well as Outlook.

My apologies to richnrockville, yeah I'm using IMAP servers makes and it make it so much easier, and I'm sorry I didn't mention that.

I did try moving files around, then found that just creating identical accounts was all I needed to do. I didn't, at that stage, think my ISP used IMAP. Now I know they do. And I spent time railing against Microsoft in a forum of people trying to help me. Bad form, and I apologise, again.

Still, the process could be made a lot easier. After all, email records and contacts are very important information to a lot of people, and having a 'Migrate Outlook in its Entirety' would be good to have. Storing data in two different places is confusing, too, it's not like it's old version of Outlook, it's v14 out of Office 2010, and still has numerous files, in the two locations. And the accounts need to be manually set up to transfer the original data.

In the eternal features race, I'd always felt that Excel didn't get much luvin', but now Outlook seems to be missing a few details, particularly in the import/export functions. I'm not sure that it's still the case, but I had to write a programme to export all my contacts as vcf. I know Outlook will do that, one by one, but it couldn't do all at once, hence my use of the PIA which seems to have very loosely defined licensing (and very loosely defined API calls, too). At least though, having a directory full of vcfs is a lot safer, I think.

Certainly, if there are easy ways to transfer data, I'd be happy to hear.

 

[alirezanasibi]

I had similar issue. It was a big headache to transfer everything to a new outlook while you had an imap account! Finally I found the solution! Backup8 is the software which can backup outlook, WLM, Thunderbird, The Bat!.... It did solve my issue.
You can find it here: Windows Live Mail Backup, Windows Mail Backup, Email Backup software, Outlook Express Backup - StaticBackup Inc.

 

[emueyes]

Well, having IMAP servers made it heaps easier for me, my problem there was making assumptions about my ISP, I thought I was using it as a POP3 server. That's all fixed now.

@ alirezanasibi thanks for the tip

That software looks to be exactly what I want, and should have been built into Outlook. Oh, hang on, they could go to trial by doing that and bundling things with Windows. Crazy world.

Any other comments on it alirezanasibi? Did everything work automatically? I know at least some Windows machines have several accounts for different people -what did it do about file permissions for users that don't exist as Windows Users on the new machine?

It would be worth the 20 bucks just for having backups of a running system.

 

[alirezanasibi]

Actually, I haven't tried it when the user account is different. You can write to them and inquire. But with same user, it works perfect.
Good I could be your help

 

[bluberix]

Solution

Hi,

I have a simple solution for all the seekers. I use Windows Easy Transfer for this task daily. For detailed instructions see my post:

BLUBERIX: Migrating user profile with Outlook 2010

Jiri

Hi all

This topic seems to have been overcooked already, but after sampling about 5 years worth of chefs tips, I'm still feeling very unsatisfied.

I want to transfer the data - email, contacts, calendar and accounts for both gmail and my ISP - from one system to another (I built a new computer, this one has a nasty habit of going off.) I don't use/want stationery etc

I'm using Outlook 2010 64bit, and Windows 7 64bit SP1 on both systems.

Does or does not the Easy Transfer tool do this for me? I have read that it will, or won't. I've also read insanely convoluted procedures to move the required files around and get Outlook to recognise them properly. I don't think it helps that Outlook keeps its files in (at least) two different places, %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Outlook Files and %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

A definitive answer would be very helpful. I haven't even finished building the new machine yet, so having or not having started Outlook isn't an issue. I just want it to work.

Rob