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Transfering saved emails from Outlook Express on WinXP to new Win8.1 computer

ChrisL
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Registered: ‎13-12-2007

Transfering saved emails from Outlook Express on WinXP to new Win8.1 computer

In my old Outlook Express client I have four separate Identities, each with many local folders organising saved emails.
Many of these saved emails contain important information I refer to regularly. I shall need to access them on my new Win8.1 computer, which does not support OE.
Question 1:  what is the best email solution to run on Win8.1, for an old computer git used to his OE?
Question 2:  how do I go about transfering all my saved emails from my old OE to the new computer?
I should be very grateful for any advice.
Chris.
10 REPLIES 10
HPsauce
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Re: Transfering saved emails from Outlook Express on WinXP to new Win8.1 computer

A complex problem, especially with multiple identities under one logon.
In the "brave new world" those will have to be under separate logons, if you need to keep the separation.
The most doable route (others will disagree and have different solutions) IMHO is to migrate to Windows Live Mail.
You'll need to do this on the old XP system first, them move WLM data to the new one.
A bit of Googling should find lots of advice on the details.
Note that it's a different version of WLM that runs on XP vs W8, but you can install that (older) version on later OS's if you like it though ongoing operation and support isn't guaranteed.
Oldjim
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Re: Transfering saved emails from Outlook Express on WinXP to new Win8.1 computer

maranello
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Re: Transfering saved emails from Outlook Express on WinXP to new Win8.1 computer

I've got a solution that appears to work.
1. On the machine running OE, I have changed two email accounts from POP3 to IMAP.
2. I have created new folders on the IMAP account that mimic the saved folders that are stored locally  on the machine running OE. I have then copied the contents of the folders onto the IMAP account
3. On the Win 8.1 computer I have installed Windows Live Mail 2012. I have set up both my email accounts as IMAP accounts. All the folders I created are visible.
If you have a lot of saved items you run the risk of exceeding the storage limit on the IMAP servers. You could create local folders on the Win8.1 computer and move the saved items onto local storage. I'm considering the option of using network storage (I believe this is possible with WLM 2012, it never was with OE). Another option I will explore is to create either a google mail account or outlook.com account where the storage limit is less restrictive than Plusnet.
My other car isn't a Ferrari
ChrisL
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Re: Transfering saved emails from Outlook Express on WinXP to new Win8.1 computer

Thank you to everyone for the interesting and helpful replies. I'm following up on various suggestions with research and agonising....
Tempted by Oldjim's idea of sticking with the familiar OE, but worried by the rather 'home-made' and support-free look of OE6 -- I've never been an early adopter!
I'm probably going to go with maranello's method, but using Windows 8 Mail app.  If anyone has had experience of this, I'd be grateful for a heads-up.
I suspect I shall be back for further help before I have this sorted.....
Very grateful
Chris
PS -- I've just re-read HPSauce's comment on the Mail app in another thread, and I shall take seriously the preference for WLM -- Thanks.
RobPN
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Re: Transfering saved emails from Outlook Express on WinXP to new Win8.1 computer

@ ChrisL
In reply to your post in 'the other' thread ...
Quote from: ChrisL
I'm very interested in what you say about transfering emails from a WinXP to a Win7 running Thunderbird. To save hijacking this thread, I wonder if you'd be willing to expand on your reply in my thread
http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,130452.0.html ?
I have never used Thunderbird, so need someone willing to hold my hand in getting files across from OE, and then again in moving from the old to the new computer (presumably this will not be very different in getting to Win8.1 rather than Win7?).
I hope you don't mind me asking?
Chris

Sorry for the delayed reply but I've been a bit busy.
I'd tend to agree with HPSauces comment above because when I was reading about moving from OE on a WinXP PC to Thunderbird on a different Win7 PC I saw something that said it was not possible to migrate multiple Identities across, but that didn't affect me because I only used a single Identity.
I'd seen some advice about installing TB on the WinXP PC to enable migration of the email folders etc. from OE to TB, before migrating everything from the WinXP TB installation to the Win7 TB one, and although I can't remember the exact procedure it was straight forward enough.
After I'd got all the email folders (with their contents and the folder tree intact!) moved across to the Win7 PC, I was a bit disappointed that the email accounts themselves (probably 15-20) hadn't appeared in TB because I didn't really want to go through configuring them all again.
However, a little bit of investigation/experimentation led me to discovering that if I copied a single file across from the WinXP TB installation to its corresponding location for the Win7 TB installation, all of the email accounts appeared and just required their passwords entering to be usable.  I can't remember the name of the file I copied, but if you're still interested I can easily find out.
drj
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Re: Transfering saved emails from Outlook Express on WinXP to new Win8.1 computer

I gave up trying to get my emails from my XP desktop to my W8 laptop. I tried migrating on the XP machine both to Windows Mail and to Thunderbird but neither fully worked, possibly owing to the number of different email addresses I've been using, and the format they were coming out in wasn't acceptable (my nativity in doing it didn't help either)
In the end I decided the best long term solution was to migrate them all to Gmail (where I've had an account for years but hardly used it) though it's meant creating loads of new folders on my Gmail account since it appeared I couldn't drag folders across, only emails. I've cut down the number of folders from around 2,500 to around 100 or so by amalgamating ones I'd created for monthly or annual groupages - Googles search facility does seem quite good at sorting once you get used to it. The only problem I've had is that I recently tried to find an email and the search routine only produced emails dating back to 2007 whereas the one I wanted was earlier. However I did delete some early emails so it might have been one of those or the search term didn't feature in the email.
If you're referring to some frequently, wouldn't it be better to print them as PDF files and hold on your local machine - or in ordinary cloud storage?
ChrisL
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Re: Transfering saved emails from Outlook Express on WinXP to new Win8.1 computer

Thank you @RobPN and @drj for adding interesting information and advice. The way I'm thinking at the moment is to go with maranello, since my OE Identities are mirrored by Plusnet mailboxes and will presumably all get switched over to IMAP:
Quote from: maranello
<snip>
2. I have created new folders on the IMAP account that mimic the saved folders that are stored locally  on the machine running OE. I have then copied the contents of the folders onto the IMAP account
<snip>
If you have a lot of saved items you run the risk of exceeding the storage limit on the IMAP servers.

Question 1:  is it easy to copy the contents of local folders in OE onto the Plusnet IMAP servers?
Question 2: what are the storage limits on the IMAP servers?
Best wishes
Chris
bobpullen
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Re: Transfering saved emails from Outlook Express on WinXP to new Win8.1 computer

Quote from: ChrisL
Question 1:  is it easy to copy the contents of local folders in OE onto the Plusnet IMAP servers?

Should be simple enough.
Quote from: ChrisL
Question 2: what are the storage limits on the IMAP servers?

You'll need to keep things < 1GB.

Bob Pullen
Plusnet Product Team
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ChrisL
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Re: Transfering saved emails from Outlook Express on WinXP to new Win8.1 computer

Thanks Bob.  A bit of housekeeping and this should be fine!
Chris
drj
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Re: Transfering saved emails from Outlook Express on WinXP to new Win8.1 computer

Quote from: Bob
Quote from: ChrisL
Question 2: what are the storage limits on the IMAP servers?

You'll need to keep things < 1GB.

If you need more try Gmail - mine's showing "1.5 GB (9%) of 15 GB used" and only a bit of that is Google+ which I hardly ever use (don't know why I started...)