Converting a Outlook Express mailbox to Outlook 2003
I found a strange problem today that involves converting a Outlook Express mailbox (store) over to Outlook 2003 (pst). I am not sure if this is an isolated problem on just this particular Windows XP machine, or whether it was some other bizarre configuration problem.
However, the problem rears it’s ugly head with the following scenario.
If you are using Outlook Express (I had v6) to send and receive emails and want to convert over to Outlook, it is really quite easy. If you launch Outlook, it will automatically prompt that it has found the Outlook Express mailbox and would you like to import it.
The main problem is if you have over 2gb of Outlook Express emails, for some reason I found that Outlook 2003 automatically used the old PST format that only allowed files of 2gb to be created. Unfortunately, this particular mailbox was 7gb, so it started converting happily, but got to 2gb and just stopped basically skipping 5gb of emails!.
The way I got around this was to go into Outlook, setup a new profile with the POP3 or IMAP details etc. Then I created a new mailfile (PST) in the new Outlook 2003-2007 format which allows much larger PST files (Microsoft says it is capable of a theoretical size of 33 terabytes!).
Then if you open Outlook, and select the File menu and then Import and Export as per the screenshot below:
and them import your Outlook Express emails by pointing it to the store folder. The default location on Windows XP is (unless it is changed in the options of Outlook Express):
C:\Documents and Settings\[Username]\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\[GUID]\Microsoft\Outlook Express
This will then allow you to convert even the largest of OE stores.
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Outlook Express, Outlook 2003, Windows XP
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