Outlook PST files and Mac - conversion time
When I first got my Mac I also made a fundamental shift in the way I manage my e-mail; I switched from Outlook to Gmail. Since I made that switch I've been quite happy; not only does Gmail give me IMAP access so I can get to it from within Mac's Mail, I can also get to it from my little Motorola phone and from any web browser on a public terminal. Sure, Gmail's IMAP implementation leaves much to be desired but the tagging model is really great.
Prior to switching to Gmail I used Outlook for many, many years. I went from version to version, carrying my PST file with me all along the way. Since the newer versions of Outlook didn't have a problem with PST files larger than 2GB I didn't even bother to archive my e-mails. I liked that I could search through my entire e-mail history, dating back to 1996, at any time.
Enter the Problem
So what I've been ignoring for a few months now hit me again yesterday when I had to fire up my Windows XP machine to search for an old e-mail that contained an account number I needed. What I really needed to do was get that 4.1GB PST file into a format that my Mac could read easily.
I did a lot of research and finally found a solution: O2M from Little Machines. This is a little Windows application that sells for $10; it will convert your Outlook E-mail into MBOX files, which are simply UUEncoded text files that can easily be read by Mac's Mail program. It will also produce vCard (vcf) files for your contacts and iCal (ics) files for your calendar events.
O2M is easily worth the $10, even though for me it's a one shot deal and then I'm done with it. This program is really, really quirky though. It's likely using Microsoft's MAPI interface to scan through the contents of Outlook, which means that if you have an archived PST file you will need to open it in Outlook before it can be exported.
Keep in mind this is a Windows application, not a Mac application, so have a PC (or Windows VM) with Outlook installed and running in order to perform this conversion.
Warning! UI Hazard Ahead!
If you care at all about well designed user interfaces you will need to wear some protective gear when you fire up this application. The UI looks like something that a Visual Basic newbie put together in 1992 without the aid of any standard UI components or even a fully functioning monitor. Don't believe me?
See the control alignment? The completely random whitespace? See those little, itty-bitty checkboxes? You get to manually select every single one of them. Got lots of folders like I do? Enjoy. Fortunately I was able to select the first one and then stand on the Space bar while it cycled through all of the folders.
In spite of the UI it does indeed work, plowing through my gigantic PST file and dutifully popping out scores of MBOX files that can be consumed by Mail or even simply searched in their native form if need be.
It can take a very long time to run, especially if your PST file is very large like mine. It's something that needs to be casually monitored too because every once in a while it would come across some e-mail and generate an error message about a bad date format and ask whether it should fix the error (Uh, yeah!) or ignore it, or warn me about exporting a digitally signed e-mail.
I ran this on my Windows XP machine with 2GB of RAM and an Intel QX6700 quad core processor. With nothing but Outlook 2007 running it took nearly 4 hours to process my e-mail, extracting 77K messages in 495 folders (now Mailboxes) and 172 Contacts.
Once you're done with the conversion you can select an entire set of folders under the File / Import Mailboxes feature in Mail. It will also take a little while to suck them in, though not nearly as long as it takes to export them from Outlook.
I decided not to import all of my mail though, realizing that large swaths of my messages were really pointless to keep around (most of the old ListServe messages I had are searchable in Google Groups anyway). I now have one less piece of Windows software to depend on.
Yes, I knocked O2M hard on the UI front but it did work fine for me and was well worth the $10 I paid for it. I just wish the Little Machines folks would update the UI on it.
Comments
I use Mail.app on my Mac, so I can access the Outlook-Gmail messages and copy them to local Mail.app folders if I want.
It's free, but if I had GBs of email locked away in PSTs I might also be tempted to spring for 10 bucks on a program that does it for me.
I ended up using a program called Emailchemy (http://www.weirdkid.com/products/emailchemy/index.html)
It's about $30, but it's a cross platform tool that converts from a ton of file formats to RFC-2822. You can then use your target email client to import the data. Or, and this is the cool part, you can run its built-in IMAP server against the exported data, and then point your target email client to it and then move the data into your email client.
While this was a one shot deal for me this time (Outlook to Mail.app), theoretically, I should be able to use this the next time I switch email clients.
While I keep some stuff available through IMAP, most of my data is stored locally simply because of the shear volume of data.
http://www.weirdkid.com/products/emailchemy/
Another one to add to the arsenal. It will aid in switching amongst Mac mail clients as well if you ever get fed up with Apple Mail.
Eric
Web-JIVE.com
And that IMAP support is pretty damn cool.
Phillip
Mac IT guy
you could've done it for free, and pretty easy too ;)
Install Thunderbird on your pc. Have it import your mail from Outlook.
Install Thunderbird on your Mac.
Transfer the Thundebird mail folders to your mac.
Have Mail.app import from Thunderbird.
That's the way I did it, that's the way dad did it, and that's how Denmark does it !
(Sorry, couldn't help myself, I just love the new Ironman movie ;) ).
Anyway, it's how I did it, and it doesn't take that long, plus it's free. Works too.
1) Install libpst
http://alioth.debian.org/projects/libpst/
2) Use the readpst utility installed in step 1) above to convert pst files to Unix mbox format
Allan
3) Import into Apple Mail or Mozilla Thunderbird.
It's not 100% perfect (attachments may not be converted properly), but I'm happy if I can get the body text and the names of the senders and recipients.
I had as well as PetieG, problems with the mbox files - after using O2M all the Subfolder where shown with the ending .mbox in Apple Mail and only after renaming all Subfolder by deleting the .mbox ending Apple was able to read the content inside the Subfolders.
With more than 1500 Subfolders and not so Computer literate it took me a weekend to do the job manually.
I wasn't happy and still look for another solution to do the conversion with my other archive files yet.
You may want to consider Emailchemy instead of O2M - based on what people have said in the comments it may be a better solution.
Does the O2M also convert Calendar and Contacts etc from Win Outlook or is it only mail?
I'm looking for a solution to convert the entire lot not just the email...
Thanks
Kim
Derek
http://www.weirdkid.com/products/emailchemy/index.html
Michael
Thanks.
Clem
Cheers, H.
Keep it up guys.....
I couldn't find any other resource that would tell me if it was even possible to maintain the folder structure aside from purchasing Outlook for MAC which inconveniently now is ONLY available in the Office Professional bundle. Currently $250 and what's the point since I'm moving to MAC I don't want to repurchase all of my old Microsoft programs again. That's how they get you. I would love it if someone could point me to a good article on managing and archiving emails for a one-man business. I have 7 years of emails that I would like to keep searchable because you never know when you have to look up an old supplier or remind yourself what you last said to a client.
Thanks,
Ken
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