How do you Retrieve Email Messages from Outlook 2003

Hi,

I have just upgraded to Vista after being unable to start XP SP2.

I was previously using Outlook 2003 for emails and have saved all of the Microsoft office folders to a separate partition on my hard drive before upgrading. Vista also saved all of my windows folders to windows.old.

I am now using Windows Mail and need to retrieve all of my old emails. When I try to import from Outlook in Windows Mail I get the error message: "message cannot be imported from the MAPI client" when I do a search *.DBX files I get plenty of old ones from Outlook Express but nothing from Outlook

Any advice on how to retrieve these would be appreciated.

Axel

 

This is because only Outlook Express uses the .DBX extension. Outlook doesn't use the same extension as Outlook Express.
Outlook uses .PST or .OST (I can't remember which; my memory really, really, sucks). I'm pretty sure it's .PST but you should search for both just to be sure.

 

You have to have Outlook 2003 installed first (not sure if you do or just saved the folders), then import .pst file back into outlook (if not there already), then import the file into Windows Mail.

You can try looking for the .pst file and try importing directly into Windows Mail but you might get an error because files are needed from outlook for this if I recall.

 

Hi,

Thanks for that. I have found the PST files but Outlook is no longer installed. Is there any way to get the messages into widows Mail without reinstalling Outlook, which I am having difficulties with?

Axel

 

Only other way I can think of that might work is to download MS free trial of Office 2007, only install Outlook.

Try importing the .pst into the trial outlook then import into Windows Mail.
Also the .pst should to be on the PC that has Outlook installed...move it to a folder on your PC before trying to import. (make a copy incase something goes wrong)

I haven't used Outlook 2007, if you can't import the pst. Make a copy of the pst file, then see if you can move the file to the pst location in Outlook 2007, not sure if you will be able to... but worth a shot.

Note: do not use 2007 trial as your email unless you plan of buying it, import into Windows Mail or other.

Some reading:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Import_.pst_files
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA010771141033.aspx