Migrating Mail from Windows Mail To Outlook Express

Skidilliplop · 8 Oct 2008 at 14:13

I've had a guy at work offer me £50 to roll his laptop back to XP Pro because Vista is driving him round the bend and causing him immense public embarrassment. Most of the stuff is pretty dull document transfer and it's from office 2007 to office 2007. Nice and easy, I've done it 100s of times like to like or to upgraded OSs though normally using Outlook or something decent

The bit I'm worried about is Downgrading from windows mail to Outlook Express. I've moved his mail from a broken XP laptop to another XP laptop before and he has a LOT of mail but it was pretty much just a case of copypasta on a large scale. I have a feeling dumping the files in the Mail directory won't work this time.

Anyone done this before? Any tips or warnings? how long did it take?

My first thought is that even if it's snag free 40 gig of data transfer isn't worth a mere £50 of my precious home life... but to get nearly there and have to ghost it all back to how it was with no money for it would be worse.

paradigm · 8 Oct 2008 at 14:53

Windows Mail = Outlook Express, so your old method will work fine.

Skidilliplop · 8 Oct 2008 at 16:17

Fair enough, I'd expected microsoft to have changed some tiny thing that would cause it to be a complete pain in the arse.

His Mail is his life. I don't like people who work like that but the matter remains he does. Just wanted to check if someone had successfully migrated an entire mail profile including account settings from one to the other before I even bothered trying.

If you're confident it'll work I might rig up a quick test when I get home and see what gives. Think he owes me more than £50 if I do decide to do it, Even with it's gigabit card 40 gig of data is going to take a while to copy and verify + i always take a snapshot before I format anything.

paradigm · 8 Oct 2008 at 17:41

I can give it a go if you like, I have a vista box and an XP box here.

EDIT: Just migrated a test account from Windows Mail 7 to Outlook Express 6.

In Windows Mail, I file > export > messages to "Microsoft Windows Mail" format.

Copy the directory created to XP machine, open Outlook Express, drag all "inbox" email files into "inbox", rinse and repeat (for Drafts, Sent, Outbox, etc).

Skidilliplop · 8 Oct 2008 at 20:09

Hmm I was hoping I could just copy the ../username/application data/microsoft/outlook etc folder from one to the other. That worked with Outlook express. I'd do as you suggested only there's about 9.5GB of mail in there and about 70 folders + associated rules etc. I dont suppose you can download and isntall Windows Mail 7 for XP can you? that'd be too easy.

I think I'm going to have to borrow the laptop for an hour or so and copy it to a spare XP box and see what happens. If its not going to be a click click and forget job I'm not doing it, he can get his own tech guy to do it.