Migrate Outlook Express to Windows Mail or Thunderbird

I had a laptop which suffered a major hardware problem and has been replaced. I have the hard drive from the old laptop, hooked up via a USB cable to my new laptop. The old system ran Windows XP and the new one is Windows Vista.

I would like to migrate at least the phone books from my old system, possibly the saved messages folder to either Windows Mail or Thunderbird. Both programs seem ok importing formatted (.wab) files but I don't have Outlook Express anymore to prepare a .wab file. All I have is the raw data on the old hard drive.

Any suggestions on how I can do that?

 

As far as I am aware, the contacts are saved as .wab files anyway so just do a search of the hard drive for *.wab and you'll find them all.

And Outlook Express by default keeps the mail store folders in "C:\Documents and Settings\usernamehere\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{long-string-numbers-and-letters}\Microsoft\Outlook Express" where you replace usernamehere with the user name you logged in with and there may be more than one folder that meets the criteria of "{long-string-numbers-and-letters}". For each identity that was created in Outlook Express, there'll be a folder. The mail folders end in .dbx and have sensible names like Outbox and Drafts. The one named Folders.dbx is the one that keeps track of what mail folders there should be.

Here are some links about Outlook Express, backing up and restoring these folders, Thunderbird, etc.:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/270670/EN-US/
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/182833/EN-US/
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Import_from_Outlook_Express

 

I just went through this yesterday (Outlook Express to Windows Mail). This guide was the one which works the easiest. I put the contacts on a flash drive and was done in only a few minutes. The other suggestions I found online were too complicated.

The trick is to export the contacts as 'Text File (Comma Separated Values)'.

 

thanks for the tips. I did the search on the old hard drive for .wab, found it, and put it on my Vista desktop. I clicked on it to see if anything would happen and windows contacts opened up and took it. done.

Next I did a search for all the .dbx files and then dragged them into a new folder on my Vista desktop. The first time I tried to import nothing happened, the second time, it took it so it looks like I am all set up.

The only problem I am having now is trying to set up windows mail to work with gmail's IMAP function

Again, thanks for the help!

 

got the IMAP cranking now
thanks

 

thanks. I've now recovered the aggresses but the old messages that I have are still in limbo somewhere