Getting Windows Live emails into Outlook Express

September 5, 2013 tmtips Business

This will explain how I was able to Export emails from Windows Live Mail to Outlook Express. I had an issue the other day where a customer was set to go on Vacation for two weeks and they were using XP with Outlook Express.  Their boss wanted to receive all of the emails from that person while they were away.  They ended up adding the same account to the Bosses machine with Windows 7 and Windows Live Mail and made sure no one opened the Outlook Express, XP machine. [Side note, they came to their own solution where I would have setup the account on both machines, keep messages on the Server for 20 days so I would not have to do what I am doing now).  The person came back and now needed to setup things as they were before and take the emails from Live Mail and put them back into Outlook Express.  Well good ol’ Microsoft doesn’t make it simple for anyone to do but luckily for you, we have a solution.  You can export all of your mail under your account in Windows Live Mail to a folder using the Export Messages feature built in.  When you do this, it will create the folder structures with .EML files and a single .FOL file for each folder.  All we need to do is take the exported folder over to the machine with Outlook Express and delete the .FOL files in each folder.  If you want to import the inbox, you have to have Outlook Express open and on one side of your screen and the Exported folder on the other.  Open the exported Inbox folder with the .EML files so you see all of the single emails and do a Select All (Either Edit>Select All or CTRL+A) and drag them to the Inbox folder inside Outlook Express.  This will now “Import” the new emails into Outlook Express with no problems.  You can then proceed to any other folders and perform the same steps.  You can then safely delete the old account out of the Windows 7 Live Mail program and the Exported folder.

If, when you drag and drop, you are getting an email popup with an attachment of all the emails you are dropping, its because you did not delete the .FOL file.

Export, Import, Outlook Express, Windows 7, Windows Live Mail,