What has everybody found as the best way to import Outlook data into Evolution or Kontact? I have tried using outport, but it seems a bit outdated, it doesn't generate files that Evolution can import. Also, in Evolution, I never seem to have the option to choose what type of file to import, it is always grayed out.

I have also heard of exporting various things to Thunderbird, and then importing from Thunderbird into Evolution. But this too, doesn't work for me.

Has anyone had good success making the transition from Outlook to either Evolution or Kontact?

Thanks!

One of Evolution's weaknesses is importing/exporting.
I don't use it anymore, and this is one of the reasons.
Have you tried Thunderbird?

Along similar lines, if you install Thunderbird on Windows, and import all the settings etc from Outlook, you can then easily import the Windows Thunderbird files into any Linux mail program, as they all use a *standard* format.

Using Evolution 2.26.1, if you go to the program's help and search for "outlook", you'll get instructions to export your contacts & calendar from outlook as CSV (DOS). In Outlook 2003, doing that for contacts doesn't work (when you import, you get thousands of bogus contact data); doing that for calendar doesn't work either (nothing gets imported).
Also using Outport for exporting calendar didn't work for me; evolution didn't recognize the ics file as valid.

The solution I found was to install Outlook 2007 (if you don't have it, grab the free Trial from Microsoft), and:
- Export contacts as CSV as before

- Export calendar by using Save As, as explained here. This way, not only did it work well, but also avoided problems with recurring events, which don't get exported correctly by exporting to CSV.

You can import these into Google Calendar (nice to have SMS notifications!) and Google Mail contacts. The only problem seems to be that characters like "ñ" get scrambled.