Moving Outlook Express Emails to a new computer

Qwikpix

Having had problems accessing my old Outlook Express 6.0 emails I thought that I would post an account of a solution that worked for me.

About five weeks ago, my 6 years old Dell Dimension 3100 running Microsoft XP Pro started to give trouble. It started to freeze regularly. I was worried that the hard disk was starting to fail. So I moved all of my data files to an external drive. I decided to leave the moving of the email files to another day. That was a mistake!

The next day, the Dell would not start. Each time, messages appeared warning of a "thermal" problem. So I thought that the system might be overheating because of an accumulation of dust around a fan - or elsewhere.

So I opened the box! I was astonished to find that the heatsink had fallen off the processor. When the computer was assembled, two retaining screws for the heatsink unit had not been used. So it had been held in place by the layer of paste between it and the processor, and the groove in which it was mounted. Presumably, over time the paste dried out and then the unsecured heatsink unit just fell off.

At this point, I ordered a new computer and bought a hard drive enclosure. When the new computer arrived, I put my old drive into the enclosure (turning it into an external drive). Happily it was possible to access its contents.

Having found the location, I then copied over to the new computer the Outlook Express folder. The files in the folder are in DBX format. I then tried to import the files into Outlook 2007. This was only partially successful as most of the DBX files were said to be corrupted.

I then tried several utilities to try to repair the DBX files. They all failed. One utility managed to recover 3 DBX files but these were old newsgroup folders with only a few messages in each.

I then found a free utility called DbxConv. This is designed to extract messages from Outlook Express 5 & 6 and convert them to standard MBOX format. This is a plain text format and the folders can then be read using a text editor or Notepad.

This conversion appeared to work. I finished up with 75 large MBOX files. I then tried to import these into Thunderbird which I installed for the purpose. The import failed.

I then did a Google search for other email programs that use MBOX files. I found a few. Eventually I installed "Claws-Mail" which was certainly new to me. It is also completely free. Happily this attempt to import files worked. The first MBOX file was my old inbox which contained about 15,000 emails - many with large attachments. "Claws-Mail" imported this in less than a minute. I have now completed the importation of all my MBOX files and I have not lost any of my emails.

I don't know if I will use "Claws-Mail" as my email program. For now I am just using it to access my archive of over 30,000 emails.

I think that what was wrong with my DBX files was that they became too large to import and were deemed to have been corrupted. In all they contained about 1GB of emails and attachments. Therefore, my advice to anyone using Outlook Express is:

1. Stop.

2. Convert your DBX files to MBOX while they are still working. Conversion will not overwrite the originals - it just generates a set of MBOX files (rather like extracting the contents of a ZIP file to a new folder.

3. Keep a copy of your MBOX files folder on a USB key or burn it to DVD.

4. Start using a new email program that can import MBOX files.

I am not that technical so there may be other solutions of which I am not aware. I am surprised that my attempt to import DBX files to MS Outlook 2007 failed. I don't understand why Microsoft have not produced a simple utility to make such transfers worry free. It would certainly encourage XP users to upgrade to Windows 7/8.

janeparker

Hi Qwikpix,
No need to do various experiment with your DBX file. As you discussed that your DBX file is corrupted so use a DBX repair tool at :
http://www.stellaroutlooktools.com/outlookexpress/dbx-repair.php

This tool offers free demo to check whether it will be repaired your file or not by a preview result.

After repairing it, as you mentioned about import DBX file in Outlook 2007. So, to do this job, you must take following steps :

1 - Copy all DBX items
2 - Store in your newbie computer
3 – Install live mail to import in to live mail
4 – Now, you can import in Outlook 2007

If you interested to see a useful resource regarding converting process of DBX file then take a glance on : http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/config/backup-config/move-oe-to-outlook-new-computer

Regards :
Jane

Qwikpix

Hi Jane,

Thank you very much. I am sure that your post will be useful to other people.

My problem was that my attempts to repair the DBX folders did not work. I tried the utility that you mentioned and it would not work at all. Another utility repaired three small DBX folders. So I suppose that the problem may have had something to do with the large size of the other folders.

The only thing that did work for me was the utility that managed to convert my supposedly corrupt DBX folders to MBOX. This solved my problem in that the contents of MBOX folders (except attachments) can be read with Notepad and similar programs.

I am now using Thunderbird for new mail.

My old emails and attachments imported into Claws Mail from the converted MBOX files - so about 40,000 emails many with .doc and .pdf attachments can be accessed easily and are now safe (I have several backups).

Thanks, again.

The Black Oil

I had to do something like this for my Dad. Only thing is, I can't recall how I went about it, but it was something like converting the .dbx files to .pst. He was on OE6 on Win 2000 and moving to Outlook 2007 on XP. It went pretty smoothly once I had changed everything over and was able to import the old stack of emails. I probably used some sort of online converter, I don't know. I'll have a think.