Outlook 2007 - Migrate to IMAP from POP3

[eXor]

My friend uses Outlook 2007 for his e-mail. It was initially set up with POP3 and all was well, until the inevitable happened.. his computer crashed.

Now he is asking how he can retrieve all his old e-mails, as he can no longer see any of them.

He has no backups, and "Leave a copy of the message on the server" was always unchecked before the crash.

I'd like to move him from POP3 to IMAP, without losing any existing messages in Inbox / Outbox /Sent.

I'm a Thunderbird user, so not familiar with Outlook. 'Account Type' is set to POP3, but greyed out. I assume this means that there is no switching on-the-fly?

There seem to be three options:

1. Create a duplicate IMAP account and use that. Keep old POP3 account alongside, in case old messages need to be accessed. May create confusion, with the old account being used inadvertently.

2. Remove POP3 account. Create new IMAP account. All existing messages are lost in the process.

3. Back up POP3 account. Remove POP3 account. Create new IMAP account. Populate IMAP folders with old messages from the backed up POP3 account. Is this even possible?

Any suggestions on the best way to proceed?

 

[edscdk]

you say his computer crashed? unless you trashed the drive the old emails are still in his profile folder... search it (along with hidden folders) for a .PST file..

Moving from pop to imap I would

1) delete the POP3 account in outlook (this will not delete the personal folders)
2) create the imap account, this will create a new folder for inbox etc, but will not delete the old one.