Transferring outlook express folders to windows live mail easily

[Laimbo]

Hi guys,

When importing emails from outlook express to windows live mail the imported emails get saved into a new folder called "Imported Items". Normally I would just drag the emails back to their correct locations (Inbox, sent ect), which is a bit of a pain but not too time consuming. However I have one today in which the user has a lot of user created folders which all import into the same imported items folder and cant be moved out.

Each folder has to be created manually in WLM under the standard folders and then the emails moved manually into the new folders, in order to recreate the same arrangement the user is used to.

Has anyone else experienced this issue and found an easier way?

Thanks!

Liam.

 

[vdub12]

I don't think there is an easier way.

I agree its a pain but MS does not give you any other way to do it. You could always use Thunderbird.

 

[Laimbo]

Yeah, have thought of Thuderbird. In contrast it is ridiculously easy to import email and contacts, it even does account info. It's just a bit harder to support as we don't use it very often and being open source it has its strange bugs sometimes that can be hard to fix over the phone.

 

[GRMark]

You can easily move all imported email messages and folders into the email account folder by moving the mail folders within the datastore folder of Windows Live Mail.

Once you've imported the messages and created the email account, go into the data store folder at %userprofile%\appdata\local\microsoft\Windows Live Mail\Storage folders\ and move all the emails/folders from there and put them into the folder for the email account you are importing.

This method does not retain the messages read/unread states IIRC, but it's easy enough to mark them all as read after the move.

It took me a while to figure this out after Windows 7 came out, but it is a huge time saver when customers have 10-50+ different organized folders worth of stored email messages.

Hope this helps.