Don’t let the subject of this post fool you: Thunderbird can import emails and folder and all that from Outlook, but not neccesarily in the best way. I’m not sure how this works on the Macintosh, but at least one Windows, you can’t just point Thunderbird at a .pst file as I was hoping.
I’m in the process of migrating between two corporate boxes, and thought I’d take the opportunity to switch from Outlook to Thunderbird. I ended up trashing my profile and starting from scrach (it has a nice spring cleaning feel to it). I wanted to switch over to Thunderbird immediately, so I installed it and went searching for how to point it at my Outlook .pst.
It turns out that it’s not that simple. You can’t just point Thunderbird at a .pst and run. You need to have a copy of Outlook installed, as aparently Thunderbird relies on it for the import process. That approach is probably the easiest way to get the import done, but it would be really nice to remove Outlook as a requirement for importing old Outlook data. I would have prefered to not have to reinstall Outlook on this particular box and stuck with a Firefox + Thunderbird + OpenOffice environment.
This isn’t the end of the world, and definitely not a showstopper, but gosh darn it I’d like to be able to import my Outlook messages without requiring Outlook to be installed.
Comments
46 responses to “Thunderbird Shortcomings: Outlook Import Support”
*especially* when you’re setting up someone’s new PC from scratch and restoring their files from backup. (grumble.)
The real pain in the neck with Thunderbord is the difficulty to export mails to outlook (or export mails in general).
Perhaps the developers are doing this deliberately to force you to stay with Thunderbird once you have switched
Hard to say if the various import/export functions are limited deliberately. I doubt though any solution for exporting to oultook will come from the community as most threads out on the net will say (“who wants to go back to outlook”), not understanding that most people do work in some office which does use outlook.
There was a way however going via netscape and then using the import function in outlook. But the lastest version of netscape is not supported.
Hey people chill,
There is a way to export files form Moz to OE.
Download the tool “mbx2eml” from http://home.arcor.de/luethje/prog/ & export all the mesasages from moz to *.eml format & simply drag & drop into OE.
VOILA u have a working export process
Bye n NjOy!!!
Rohitdev, thank you so much for that link, thanks Google for finding this page, and above all, thank you, Jürgen Lüthje for writting this!!
It’s so great! Thank you, Rohitdev !
You could always install Thunderbird on the machine with Outlook on it, import the files there, then simply copy the files over to the machine that just has Thunderbird on it. It’s an extra step, but it works.
Man, try the opposite direction. 😉 This is so easy. Migrating mails from Thunderbird to Outlook is the real challenge. 😉
http://robertpeloschek.blogspot.com/2005/11/importing-mozilla-thunderbird-mails-in.html
I have Outlook installed but the PST files are not in the default directory; rather they are set-up on a different drive. I’m getting “Unable to find mail to import. Check to make sure the mail application is correctly installed on this machine”. I can drag-n-drop emails from outlook to folder/directory, or even applications, but not to Thunderbird. I’ll give a try to 1.5 Beta, if it does not work there, I’ll postpone or just use Eudora.
Yeah, I heartily agree. I tried T-bird back in version 0.8, and never could get it to work right. I just tried again in version 1.5, hoping it’d be better. But I still can’t migrate settings and mail from Outlook, so I have to give up on the product again. Such a disappointment after my beloved Firefox!
If you experience problems trying to import an outlook pst using T’bird, try first importing into outlook express and then into T’bird.
how do I import a .pst file into outlook express if i don’t have outlook installed? that doesn’t seem to work either!
How do I import a PST file (from 1999) into Thunderbird, on OS X.
I don’t have Outlook nor Outlook Express. They don’t seem to be available for OS X.
Hey Team,
An even bigger problem…you all keep talking about Thunderbird to OE but I need to go from Thunderbird to Outlook. Outlook and Outlook Express are different animals. Can anyone PLEASE help me. I loved using Thunderbird up until a few days ago. It started freezing up whenever I would try to print. Then it started getting my emails from 6 months ago every time that I would check for new mail. Strange, I know, but it is starting to cause problems with utilizing my emails…so I guess its back to a Microsoft product…any help is greatly appreciated.
Bill
bill_robinson@transcript-usa.com
Bill, have a look at this page: http://www.broobles.com/imapsize/th2outlook.php
so here is an odd question.
how can i migrate to netscape from thunderbird. i recently married thunderbird, divorcing netscape 7.2. as i am facing some problems with some e-mails, i have to check whether it is a problem in thunderbird or not. i am not uninstalling thunderbird. i have to transfer all the mailsettings from thunderbird to netscape. could you please help.
regards,
jomon
Guys,
I am trying my best to move from OutLook to TBird. I do have the same issue with PST file. I have to keep OL when in office but also need TB when using VPN (OL too slow and disconnect multiple times) The TB is quick but can’t read my PST.
Is there a common format which I can use? Or can export file may be sync that every night?
Thanks,
JS
Guys,
I am trying my best to move from OutLook to TBird. I do have the same issue with PST file. I have to keep OL when in office but also need TB when using VPN (OL too slow and disconnect multiple times) The TB is quick but can’t read my PST.
Is there a common format which I can use? Or can export file may be sync that every night?
Thanks,
JS
How to Move .pst files from Outlook to TB:
1: Open **ALL** your .pst files in Outlook so they appear as folders
2: Close Outlook in this state
3: Open TB and import Outlook files into corresponding folders
4: Download and install mbox import/export extension for TB
5: Export TB folders => mbox folders
6: Delete folders from TB, empty trash, compact folders
7: Open Outlook and close the archive folders, close Outlook
Now have all Outlook mails in mbox format which can be imported back into TB as required. Would be nice to be able to search them but you can’t have everything 🙂
Done
[…] So, I fired up the trusty Thunderbird and set GMail as my POP provider. 10 minutes later, all email in GMail was nicely backed up as mbox. Now, how about those .pst files? I googled, found some tips but none of those that looked attractive and efficient actually worked for me. Having Outlook Express around might have helped, but I don’t any longer. So, the obvious but boring choice of using IMAP to transfer all the emails was made. And, for the last couple of days my poor laptop has been humming away transferring email back and forth to the IMAP server I installed locally. More than half of the data has now been migrated and the result looks really good. Before the weekend is over I should hopefully own my data for good […]
Hi people,
I know this blog post is kind of old by I stumped on it when trying to troubleshoot my problem of importing mail folders from Outlook to Thunderbird.
I found what was causing the problem from another post:
[quote=”franklin030107″]In order to import mail from Outlook 2003 (or Outlook Express), you need to have Outlook not only installed but also set as the ‘default mail client’.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Import_from_Outlook_Express – this also applies to MS Office Outlook though many users have found it smoother to import to Outlook Express first, then import from OE to Outlook.[/quote]
Just my 0.02
Cheers !
its all very well saying importing emails to outlook is easy – it is if you can install outlook. i had a power outage when archiving on outlook, and ever since then it no longer works on my computer (i’ve tried everything inc reg editors etc). This now means i can’t get my old emails onto thunderbird until they decide to start reading pst files independantly. Surely it can’t be that hard??
there is a program called libpst that coverts outlook to mbox (thunderbird compatible) http://alioth.debian.org/projects/libpst
im still not really clear so i was wondering if you can import Microsoft Office Outlook stuff (contacts, calander and other thing like that) to thunderbird thatks
I opened by mistake OE and, due to the fact that it uses different MAPI from Outlook, it fucked up my Outlook. I’ve disinstalled Outlook, Office, re-installed, etc. Nothing seems to work. I want to point out that these are 2 programs from the same company for doing more or less the same.
Well, as I cannot open Outlook, I cannot import data to OE or TB. Does anyone have a solution, meaning, importing ti TB directly from the PST file. From what I’ve read in this thread I do not have a lot of hope but who knows.
calander…
Please visit my site, …Alice Deejay…
To import outlook PST on Windows to Thunderbird on Linux, try the following.
1.)
Install Mozilla on the Windows PC where the .pst file resides.
2.)
Use Mozilla to import the .PST file. Mozilla will create a directory structure somewhere like:
C:\Documents and Settings\fred\Application Data\Mozilla\Profiles\default\hk2l1z6b.slt\Mail\Local Folders\Outlook Mail0.sbd
3.)
Install Thunderbird on Linux box. Create a folder named outlook_import in Thunderbird. Create another folder named dummy under outlook_import. This is needed because of the way folders and sub-folders are recognised by Thunderbird. You should now have a folder on Linux named something like the following.
/root/.thunderbird/4jkb6o2f.default/Mail/Local Folders/outlook_import.sbd
4.)
Then copy the sub-folders from Windowe under Mail\Local Folders\Outlook Mail0.sbd to Linux to Mail/Local Folders/outlook_import.sbd.
5.)
Stop and start Thunderbird. You should now be able to read your old .PST mail in Thunderbird.
6.)
Tell everyone else who is having this problem. There seem to be many comments out there.
Hi folks! Is there a way to import all the other stuff besides the mailboxes? I have contacts and the calendar there, and I can’t open my outlook, somehow it stopped working 🙁
Also, I can’t find in TB a way to even import mbox files… so frustrating. Thanks!
outlook express…
…
if you are looking for this path Thunderbird to OE/Outlook, here’s the bridge http://www.broobles.com/imapsize/th2outlook.php
Hi folks,
any way to transfer outlook contacts on office pc to a personal pc using Thunderbird? I went looking for a way to export outlooks contacts to a folder that I can just email to the other pc but can’t find.
thanks
Mike V
There is a plugin available for Thunderbird to import .PST files.
See:
http://linux.softpedia.com/get/Communications/Email/Thunderbird-PST-Import-plugin-33014.shtml
Thanks mips, you saved my day!
Mozilla Thunderbird can be used to extract email from a damaged pst file using the import feature.
Particularily useful if you take a copy of the damaged pst file during the investigation and just want to check you have some accessible email.
Then look at the dates to see if the date range you need for the clints data recovery are available.
Other wise send in to your nearest foensic data recovery partner to get the drive completely recovered.
If there is an exchange mailbox and it is above 2gb you might be experiencing problems due to the limitations or settings of the server operating system.
Either way best to look for help from a company like Technology Support UK (www.tsuk.eu) if you hae an Exchange server failure.
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You can use this program to convert thunderbird mail (mbox) to Outlook pst. It is called Aid4Mail. Do a google search.
What gets me is the time it all takes. The import wizard has now been running for 18 hours and still hasn’t finished. That’s the second time too – as I aborted the first after 18 hours becuase I thought something must be wrong. Meanwhile, I am having to continue using Outlook in order to get new emails.
Cheers, Graham.
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