Despite what it says almost everywhere I've looked, I did import a partial set of individual Outlook Express 6.0 .dbx files from a Windows 2000 machine into Windows Mail on a Windows Vista Home Premium machine by copying the files to a 32 MB memory key.
After importing the initial set of folders I subsequently tried to import a second set; however, I received the error message about "no files found or files in use" and the import program would not locate the files even though Explorer shows they are definitely
there. So, the warnings about not being able to import individual .dbx files are only partially correct.
I don't know what was different that allowed me to import the initial set of files but not the second set. Any suggestions?
Hi Joe,
Here are the steps to import files on Windows mail:
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1. |
Open Windows Mail by clicking the Start button , clicking All Programs, and then clicking Windows Mail. |
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2. |
Click the File menu, point to Import, and then click Messages. |
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3. |
Click Microsoft Outlook Express 6, and then click Next. |
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4. |
Make sure Import mail from an OE6 store directory is selected, and then click OK. |
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5. |
Click Browse, find the Outlook Express folder you copied to this computer, and then click the folder once to select it. (Do not open the folder when you select it.) |
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6. |
Click Select Folder, and then click Next. |
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7. |
Click All folders to import all the folders, or click Selected folders and select which message folders you want to import, and then click Next. |
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8. |
Click Finish. |
Method 2: OE dbx files cannot be individually imported into Windows Mail. Windows Mail will only import (File | Import | Messages) from dbx files in an intact message store that contains a non-corrupt version of folders.dbx (note that the files MUST NOT be read only). In order to import dbx files into Windows Mail, they must first be incorporated into an Outlook Express (or possibly Outlook) message store and then imported using File | Import | Messages.
To import from the Outlook Express message store into the Windows Mail message store, do the following:
1. Create a directory under the current user's Documents, such as Documents\OEMail. This directory needs to be within the user's space, such as under Documents, in order to prevent possible access permissions problems.
2. Copy all the dbx files from one Outlook Express Identity into this directory, ensuring that folders.dbx is included.
3. Go to Edit | Select all in Windows Explorer and select all the dbx files. Then right click on the selection and choose Properties and ensure that the read only attribute of the files is unchecked.
4. In Windows Mail go to File | Import Messages and choose Outlook Express 6 format and choose to import from a directory.
5. Then use the Browse button to browse to the directory of dbx files. Make sure that when you set the directory that what is listed in the path is correct (NOTE: Vista can put the wrong path in here sometimes, so instead of c:\mypath it puts c:\mypath\mypath, so check the path to verify that it is correct, and if it is not correct then fix it by clicking the Browse button a second time and then leave the selection blank and clicking Okay.).
6. Then select the files from which you wish to import messages and click Import.
Alternatively, one can extract the messages from the dbx files as eml files (e.g. DBXpress ) and then these eml files can be dragged from Windows Explorer and dropped into a Windows Mail folder to incorporate them into the Windows Mail message store. The eml message files in Windows Mail can also be dragged and dropped back into machines using OE.
Regards,
Amritha-Microsoft Support.
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