HELP!! Moving old emails from Outlook Express (OS9) to Entourage OSX / Entourage Upgrade Problem

[toygal88]

I have 2 problems.

I am trying to move all emails from my old Mac OS9 (Outlook Express
5.0.6) to Entourage X on my new(ish) Mac which runs on 10.3.9. What
is the quickest, easiest and cheapest way to do this?

The next problem is more serious. I've been working on my new Mac
after setting it up. After sending and retrieving a bunch of emails
today I noticed that Microsoft had a new update (10.1.9) for Mac OSX.
I downloaded the update and after running it Entourage was wiped
clean. All my emails disappeared and I have no back-up copies. How
do I get them back?

I'm not very technical so I need a "dummy's" guide to solve these
problems. Please help!!!!

 

[William Smith]

I have 2 problems.

I am trying to move all emails from my old Mac OS9 (Outlook Express
5.0.6) to Entourage X on my new(ish) Mac which runs on 10.3.9. What
is the quickest, easiest and cheapest way to do this?

The next problem is more serious. I've been working on my new Mac
after setting it up. After sending and retrieving a bunch of emails
today I noticed that Microsoft had a new update (10.1.9) for Mac OSX.
I downloaded the update and after running it Entourage was wiped
clean. All my emails disappeared and I have no back-up copies. How
do I get them back?

I'm not very technical so I need a "dummy's" guide to solve these
problems. Please help!!!!

Your information is probably safe. Somehow, Entourage may have lost its
way to your "identity", which is where your mail is stored.

I'm not very familiar with Entourage X, but I think the directions here
should still apply <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/get_started/tip009.html>.

Hope this helps!

--

bill

William M. Smith, Microsoft Interop MVP - Mac/Windows
Entourage Help Page <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>

 

[favabean]

Diane,
One good work around is to import from the Apple mail program. Under file, import and then do the same in Entourage.
Apple seems happy to import fom anywhere.

 

[Diane Ross]

One good work around is to import from the Apple mail program. Under file,
import and then do the same in Entourage.
Apple seems happy to import fom anywhere.

Thanks!! It¹s hard to understand why they dropped the old applications from
import options.

 

[Forest]

I have basically the same problem, except I'm trying to import Outlook Express 5.0 (from an old Mac with OS9) emails into Entourage 2008. The Entourage 2008 import menu does not show Outlook Express among the formats it will import (just Mac Mail and Eudora).

I have a long history of emails in OE 5.0 that I'd like to retain.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Diane Ross]

I have basically the same problem, except I'm trying to import Outlook Express
5.0 (from an old Mac with OS9) emails into Entourage 2008. The Entourage 2008
import menu does not show Outlook Express among the formats it will import
(just Mac Mail and Eudora).

I have a long history of emails in OE 5.0 that I'd like to retain.

Entourage 2004 did have the option to import from OE. You might try
downloading the demo for 2004 and import from there. Then use 2008 to import
your emails.

Option 1)

Select Import
Information from another application
My application is not listed

You will have to export your OE data as MBOX files and your contacts as a
tab delimited file

Option 2)
Set up a Gmail account as IMAP
Copy over all of your emails to your Gmail account.
Since you have to export your contacts as CVS or tab delimited to upload to
Gmail, there is no need to do this as it's the same procedure as importing
into Entourage.

How to:

MBOX files are made by dragging each folder to the desktop. Subfolders have
to be dragged individually. You can try this script that's quicker and gets
subfolders, but I'm not sure it works in Classic.

For MBOX files: Run this script on your messages: Export folders (this gets
subfolders too). The script will fail on a folder with corruption.

<http://scriptbuilders.net/files/exportfolders1.1.html>

 

[Forest]

Dragging folders from OE 5.0 does not seem to work. I drag any folder or subfolder from the Outlook window to the desktop, but nothing gets onto the desktop. A little shadow of the folder runs back to the origin folder whenever I release the mouse button.

I don't know how to run scripts.

 

[Diane Ross]

Dragging folders from OE 5.0 does not seem to work. I drag any folder or
subfolder from the Outlook window to the desktop, but nothing gets onto the
desktop. A little shadow of the folder runs back to the origin folder whenever
I release the mouse button.

This sounds like problems on your computer. Could be a drive too full,
folder too large to export. How large is your database? How large is your
HD? How full?

I don't know how to run scripts.

Drop the Export Folder script in the Script Menu Items folder. Select the
script from the application. It runs just like selecting a menu item.

 

[Forest]

I have Outlook Express 5.0.6 running on a Mac with OS 9.2.2. I have 1.62 GB free on a 6 GB hard drive. Even small folders with a few emails will not drop onto the desktop. The mouse carries a shadow of the folder, but when released it scurries back to the folder icon.

Nor will they drop into another folder on the desktop. One of my mail folders had subfolders, so I eliminated those and restarted. No improvement.

 

[Diane Ross]

I have Outlook Express 5.0.6 running on a Mac with OS 9.2.2. I have 1.62 GB
free on a 6 GB hard drive. Even small folders with a few emails will not drop
onto the desktop. The mouse carries a shadow of the folder, but when released
it scurries back to the folder icon.

Nor will they drop into another folder on the desktop. One of my mail folders
had subfolders, so I eliminated those and restarted. No improvement.

AGAIN, it sounds like your drive is too full. You can't use every GB of
drive space and expect your computer to work. The OS uses HD space for
virtual memory.

Can you burn your mail to a CD?

 

[Forest]

Since I've already moved most of my documents to the new computer, I just went through and deleted most of the documents folder on the old computer (the one with OE 5.0.6 on it). That cleared up space equal to more than 6x as much space as all of my OE folders take up, combined.

I emptied the trash, and restarted. I only opened the OE application and again tried dragging the folders to the desktop. No difference from before. None of them, not even the small folders, will place anything onto the desktop that way.

I also tried dragging them to an empty 4GB flash drive. They won't drop into that, either.

Clearly, it's not an issue of drive space.

Thanks for trying.

 

[Diane Ross]

Are any of the export features in OE still working?

 

[Forest]

The only export it shows in the menus is to export contacts, which works fine. Those exported from OE 5.0 and imported into Entourage easily enough.

 

[Diane Ross]

The only export it shows in the menus is to export contacts, which works fine.
Those exported from OE 5.0 and imported into Entourage easily enough.

Try asking on the MacOSXHints forums. You get a really wide audience of
experts that might be able to offer a solution.

<http://forums.macosxhints.com/index.php>

You will have to create a profile first. Ask in "Applications" forum.

 

[Mickey Stevens]

This is expected behavior. The ability to drag folders out of the program
and create MBOX files from them only appeared in Entourage 2001, which came
after Outlook Express 5.0 for Mac.

One way you can move mail is to create folders on your Desktop and drag all
of your messages directly from the message list to those folders. That will
save them as EML files that you can drag into Entourage folders.

 

[Forest]

Thanks Mickey!

That seems to be working. I have not imported yet.

Interesting bugs in OS9 are arising. When the files are all copied over to a folder on the hard drive, they are named for the email title. If two emails had the same message title, they get the same file name (some cases, not all). I'm pretty sure this is supposed to be impossible in any OS, but there it is, several files with the same name in the same folder. At least I don't recall ever seeing it before. Then when I copy them over to the USB flash drive (my means of transport to the new computer where they will be imported) it catches the error, and stops the copy until I change them to unique file names (I just manually append 1,2, 3 etc to the file name). Another bug is when it catches that error with one file, it says it cannot copy that file and asks me if I wish to stop or continue. Both selections cause it to stop.

 

[Forest]

Whoops. Small problem at the import end of this.

Outlook did not add .EML file extensions. They will drop into Entourage folders only if they have the .EML extension.

I can append the filenames manually, but there are 3,500 email files.

Is there a way to append .EML extensions to 3,500 file names in one step?

 

[Lisandro]

My problem is the following. I made an update of de Entourage and all my contacts disappear. I tried to reach them with the import tool, but I don't know where to find the mailboxes with the information. Sorry if there is some mistakes but I am writting from Argentina and I am doing my best for you to understand. I'm a Mac user.

 

[Diane Ross]

My problem is the following. I made an update of de Entourage and all my
contacts disappear. I tried to reach them with the import tool, but I don't
know where to find the mailboxes with the information. Sorry if there is some
mistakes but I am writting from Argentina and I am doing my best for you to
understand. I'm a Mac user.

When you add your question to a thread, it makes it harder to get help. Are
you moving from Outlook Express (OS9)?

I will try to give you an easy way to get your contacts over. If you still
have problems please reply with the answers to the questions at the end of
the message.

In your old Identity, export contacts as a tab delimited file.

Import this file into Entourage 2008 using File --> Import.

Details can be found here:

How to manually move your data:

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/install/manual_install.html>

----------------------------------------
What version Mac OS X are you running?

What version Microsoft Entourage are you using? Including update if any. How
to find version info:

<http://www.entourage.mvps.org/version/index.html#find_version>

What version did you import?

 

[Barry Wainwright]

I only opened the OE application and again tried dragging the folders to the
desktop. No difference from before.

I don't believe that OE will allow you to create a MBOX file by dragging a
folder to the desktop - that's Entourage functionality.