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Import Outlook Express Messages Into Windows Mail
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Switching from an existing email client to Windows Mail is easier than it sounds. All your existing messages can be imported into Windows Mail, which means you will not lose any of your important information. For example, if you currently use Outlook Express, you can move all your messages into Windows Mail, making the switch painless. You can accomplish this using the Import option.
To import Outlook Express messages into Windows Mail:
- Create a directory in the user’s Documents folder.
- Copy all dbx files from one Outlook Express Identity into the directory you just created.
- From the Edit menu, click Select All. Right click the files, choose Properties and verify that the Read Only attribute is deselected.
- Open Windows Mail.
- From the File menu, point to Import and click Messages.
- Click Outlook Express 6.
- Choose to import from a directory.
- Click the Browse button and navigate to the directory you created in Step 1.
- Select the files you want to import and click Import.
2 Comments
P.J. Murphy
January 21st, 2008
at 5:44pm
Just wanted to say ‘Thank You!’ for the really useful tip. I had been trying to migrate my old mail messages from OE6 to Microsoft Mail without success until I discovered your post.
The information was much appreciated, thanks once again!
PJ
Tim Trott
September 7th, 2008
at 1:37pm
Unfortunately Windows Mail does not recognize message dbx files from the current version of Outlook Express (7) and will not import them.
The apparent solution is to purchase Office for a few hundred dollars, install Outlook, import the dbx files, export the messages again and then import into Windows Mail. Or talk somebody who has Outlook on Vista to do it for me. I haven’t tried either technique yet, but apparently these are the only options available.
Of course, how I got into this situation is because Microsoft sent out Service Pack 3 which destroys TCP/IP in XP/Media Center (2005), which they conveniently no longer support. There are several other new problems introduced into XP by recent Service Packs (programs don’t unload from Task Manager and can’t be run again until instances are manually killed in task manager), apparently as part of Microsoft’s latest attempt to get more people to buy into Vista. (Taking a tip from AOL by “improving” things by removing useful functions, Vista does not display file dates on images as in previous Windows).