No import from MS Outlook to Entourage

R

Raoul Pop

Back in September, I switched from PC to Mac at home, and was up the creek
without a paddle. I'd been archiving emails for almost 10 years, and I
didn't want to lose my archive. Of course, you know that Entourage doesn't
import from Outlook PST files. I think that's pretty pathetic, considering
they're both Microsoft products, and they're the equivalent of each other on
the two platforms.

Here's what I did, for those of you in the same boat:
- Installed Thunderbird on my PC, imported from Outlook
- Installed Thunderbird on my Mac
- Transferred mailbox to Mac, copied it to the Thunderbird directory there
- Deleted index files before starting Thunderbird
- Started it, let it rebuild the indexes, and bingo, I had all of my emails

I wish I could say I was able to import my Outlook calendar that easily, but
no, it doesn't work that smoothly, and neither do the contacts.

Mac's own Mail program stinks when it comes to importing a lot of emails. I
actually wanted to use it instead of Thunderbird, but it froze or crashed
every time I tried importing emails from Thunderbird. Even after creating
separate folders for each year and moving the mail into them (in order to
avoid large folder sizes) it still crashed and burned horribly.

Soooo, the moral of the story is that open source works, and it's a life
saver!

Raoul
 
H

HSW

Raoul,
Many thanks. I completely agree with you that since Microsofy makes both
Outlook and Entourage there is absolutely no reason why the two cannot be
made compatible. In fact I don't see a reason for having two different
programs. Surely Bill Gates and his crew are smart enough to create one
program that can be used on both platforms, as they do with word, powerpoint,
and excel.

I am chagrined about this because I have run my professional and personal
life using outlook, which is a great tool (except when it gets corrupted) and
I have huge and highly articulated contact files that I simply cannot re
enter in Entourage. From the looks of the messages, it seems that wouldn't be
the greatest idea, anyway. This means using PC for all of my communications
and calendar management, reducing the use of the MAC to writing. Frankly,
this is unacceptable, since MACs are more stable and less vulnerable to
spyware and viruses. The whole thing just doesn't make sense.

I hope the Microsoft techs are monitoring this list and "get it."

This is no way to run a software company! C'mon, folks, please get it
together at Microsoft!

HSW
 
B

BD

Thanks for the info! I could not believe it when I brought my new Mac
and Office for Mac home and discovered that there was no easy way to
migrate my MS Office info to Entourage. I was only really interested
in transfering my Contacts but that seems to be the most difficult
thing to transfer so I am faced with reentering all my information. At
this point I feel that it Office for Mac should be labeled "WARNING --
DATA MAY NOT BE TRANSFERABLE BETWEEN WINDOWS AND MAC VERSIONS". Had I
known this would be an issue I probably would not have purchased the
software. . . I guess that is why that is not on the packaging!
 
R

Raoul Pop

You can transfer the contacts by using Thunderbird as middleware. I answered
a similar post about this yesterday. Here's what I wrote:

---
You can also import your contacts for free by exporting them as a CSV file
from Outlook, then using Thunderbird to retrieve them. You will have to
re-map fields to fields, and that can be a little bothersome (expect to
spend about an hour getting this right), but it should work in the end. You
will lose the custom fields, and the notes for each contact. They won't
transfer.

You can also try to export the calendar as a TDF or CSV file and import it
into Entourage/iCal. Haven't tried it yet, but I hear it should work.
 
J

Jason Meyer

Raoul said:
You can transfer the contacts by using Thunderbird as middleware. I answered
a similar post about this yesterday. Here's what I wrote:

---
You can also import your contacts for free by exporting them as a CSV file
from Outlook, then using Thunderbird to retrieve them. You will have to
re-map fields to fields, and that can be a little bothersome (expect to
spend about an hour getting this right), but it should work in the end. You
will lose the custom fields, and the notes for each contact. They won't
transfer.

You can also try to export the calendar as a TDF or CSV file and import it
into Entourage/iCal. Haven't tried it yet, but I hear it should work.
Click to expand...

What I would do
1. download Outlook 2k1 for Mac.
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downlo...look2001.xml&secid=50&ssid=1&flgnosysreq=True
2. Copy pst to mac from PC.
3. Open pst with Outlook on your Mac to make sure everything is there.
4. Download the pst import tool MS just released not to long ago...
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...e2-ea2b-4088-af2c-2fd497e2a6f8&displaylang=en
5. Done. not sure but I think you can skip step 3, but don't count on it.
 
M

Michel Bintener

What I would do
1. download Outlook 2k1 for Mac.
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.aspx?pid=download&location=/mac/downloa
d/outlook2001/outlook2001.xml&secid=50&ssid=1&flgnosysreq=True
2. Copy pst to mac from PC.
3. Open pst with Outlook on your Mac to make sure everything is there.
4. Download the pst import tool MS just released not to long ago...
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9b95cfe2-ea2b-4088-af
2c-2fd497e2a6f8&displaylang=en
5. Done. not sure but I think you can skip step 3, but don't count on it.
Click to expand...

Yes, that is an option, but I don't think it applies in this case. Outlook
2001 *requires* an Exchange environment to launch; so if a user is not
connected to an Exchange network, then he or she cannot use Outlook 2001 on
the Mac, and will consequentially not be able to use the PST Import Tool.
 
R

Robert Barrimond

Raoul,
Many thanks. I completely agree with you that since Microsofy makes both
Outlook and Entourage there is absolutely no reason why the two cannot be
made compatible. In fact I don't see a reason for having two different
programs. Surely Bill Gates and his crew are smart enough to create one
program that can be used on both platforms, as they do with word, powerpoint,
and excel.

I am chagrined about this because I have run my professional and personal
life using outlook, which is a great tool (except when it gets corrupted) and
I have huge and highly articulated contact files that I simply cannot re
enter in Entourage. From the looks of the messages, it seems that wouldn't be
the greatest idea, anyway. This means using PC for all of my communications
and calendar management, reducing the use of the MAC to writing. Frankly,
this is unacceptable, since MACs are more stable and less vulnerable to
spyware and viruses. The whole thing just doesn't make sense.

I hope the Microsoft techs are monitoring this list and "get it."

This is no way to run a software company! C'mon, folks, please get it
together at Microsoft!

HSW
Click to expand...

HSW,

Microsoft will do nothing to encourage people to migrate from Windows on the
desktop. The Mac BU is Microsoft's way to not have the baby thrown out with
the bathwater. As long as it doesn't threaten the larger company's business
model. that's why even Detto's Move2Mac doesn't transfer Outlook directly
as far as I can tell. They basically tell you to use Netscape import
Outlook data and then transfer! Raoul already figured that out. Leave it
the open source cats to actually accomplish what people want.

Office on the Mac is NOT Office on Windows. The two suite are quite
distinct with feature sets that are also, e.g. List Manager in Excel and
certain keyboard shortcuts. But they work on identical file formats which
is what really counts.

-R
 
P

panjack

For $10, you can buy Outlook2Mac from LittleMachines.com and have this
conversion automated for you.
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