To All,

I am a Network Administrator that is currently moving from proprietary software to open source software. I most recently went from Windows XP Pro to SuSE Linux 9.2 Pro and am loving it. I am currently writing a paper to the people higher up in the food chain why moving from proprietary software such as MS Office can benefit our organization and save us $1000 of dollars. One migration to open source I am mentioning is the move from MS Outlook and Outlook Express to Mozilla Thunderbird. As I am writing it, I knew that people would want to know two things first:

1. Can I import my address book?
2. Can I import all of my emails from Outlook?

The answer to the first question is easy. Yes. However when question two appears I won't be able to say yes because I don't see a way. Thunderbird tells me it can only import emails from Communicator 4.x and from the information I've gathered when I googled the answer is no. Can anyone help if there is a way or lead me in the proper direction? All and any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

-dumbsheep

There are several tools for importing from Outlook into other formats on the web. Most of the tools for importing .pst files only work on the text and not attachments. Your best bet is to setup a temporary IMAP server, move all the files and then remove the server.

Just my $.02.

Jeremy

I appreciate your $.02, but setting up another email server to handle IMAP in "the meantime" isn't an option and is a hassle. There must be another way. I tried looking for tools through google but honestly found nothing. I do appreciate the input as it does give me options.

-dumbsheep

Yes, Thunderbird can import mail too. I've done it.
Maybe you've already uninstalled Outlook from your computer and so thunderbird didn't give you a choice. It maintains all the subfolders nicely.

That's one of the things Microsoft achieves by using closed formats. Once you use, for example Microsoft Outlook, for a long time and then want to change programs you run into the issue of, "I have thousands of emails I need to keep and no other program will read this type of file.". I'm about to try Thunderbird as we speak on an Outlook 2007 .pst file in Fedora 10, I'll let you know how it goes.
........................Waiting.........................
That's a big negatory right there. I exported my mail as .csv files though before I shut down Windows, and it keeps wanting to import those as contacts, :-(

Found this, which claims to work, and lets me choose "Outlook PST File" but everything is grayed out and I can't actually select it, :-(