How-to: Convert Windows Outlook mail to Mail.app

Any Windows user should be familiar with the .PST file format. The Microsoft proprietary storage file is the heart of Outlook and keeps track of all your mail/contact/calendar information.

Now, help is on the way to get your mail out of the proprietary .pst format and into standards based mbox format. The process is a bit tedious, but so long as both machines are on the same network, it will work.

On your Windows box:

1. Download Thunderbird for Windows
(http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/)

2. Install Thunderbird

3. Upon the initial installation of Thunderbird it will ask if you want to import any mail and settings, and it gives you a choice of either Outlook, or Outlook Express – choose your program.

4. The import will start, it should take less then a half hour for a 2GB PST.

On your Mac:

1. Launch Mail.app

2. From the Finder, Connect to Server and connect to your Windows Machine

3. Navigate to the Windows machine
C:\Documents and Settings\YOURUSER\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\YOURPROFILE.default\Mail\

4. Copy the Personal Folders from the Windows machine to somewhere on your Mac – I usually use the desktop.

5. Take the file with no extension and add a .mbox extension to it

6. From Mail.app, choose File -> Import Mailboxes … select standard OTHER files

7. Point towards the directory where you copied the Personal Folders from the Windows machine (the Desktop)

8. Ensure all the mailboxes are checked (If presented with that option)

When it’s done, look in the Import Folder in the “On My Mac” folder, and ensure all your imported mail is there. This procedure should leave your mail will all attachments and ‘received dates’ in place.

If you want to just use Thunderbird on your Mac just copy:

C:\Documents and Settings\YOURUSER\Application Data\Thunderbird\

to

~/Library/Thunderbird/

and stop at step 4

Granted the procedure might be a bit different on 10.1, 10.2, 10.3 or 10.4 – so if there is a problem please ask in the comments.