Teebox17

Q: Does Migration Assistant convert Outlook folders to Apple Mail?

Hi, I'm converting a friend's system from Windows XP to a brand-new MacBook Pro running Mountain Lion. Migration Assistant seems to handle all WIndows files & folders, but is ambiguous about Outlook folders. Will it convert all his history, or just his current Inbox and identitay? Do I need to run something like 8Convert or O2M Little Machines to get his historical folders from the Windows machine to his new Mac?

Posted on Feb 17, 2013 9:28 PM

Close

Q: Does Migration Assistant convert Outlook folders to Apple Mail?

  • All replies
  • Helpful answers

  • by mende1,Helpful

    mende1 mende1 Feb 17, 2013 9:37 PM in response to Teebox17
    Level 10 (93,329 points)
    Desktops
    Feb 17, 2013 9:37 PM in response to Teebox17

    See "What gets transferred, and to where?" > http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4796?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

     

    If you have a IMAP account, Migration Assistant will transfer just the account information, because a IMAP account stores mails in the server, not on the Mac or PC.

     

    Theoretically, if you have a POP account, Migration Assistant should transfer everything you have related to your POP account (including all your mailboxes and mails) to Mail app, and they are automatically converted to use them with Mail

  • by Teebox17,

    Teebox17 Teebox17 Feb 17, 2013 10:01 PM in response to mende1
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 17, 2013 10:01 PM in response to mende1

    Thanks Mende1, my friend's main email account is a POP, but he uses Gmail (IMAP) also. I'll run the migration tomorrow and report back to you.

  • by mende1,

    mende1 mende1 Feb 17, 2013 10:01 PM in response to Teebox17
    Level 10 (93,329 points)
    Desktops
    Feb 17, 2013 10:01 PM in response to Teebox17

    You are welcome

  • by Teebox17,

    Teebox17 Teebox17 Feb 26, 2013 2:14 PM in response to Teebox17
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 26, 2013 2:14 PM in response to Teebox17

    Hi Mende1, Migration Assistant didn't do a good job of migrating Outlook folders to Mail. All the emails seemed to be in one big Inbox, and many thousands that were archived also got dragged over. My friend is not happy, so I will investigate doing the migration using Thunderbird as an intermediary step (to get the .pst files into mbox format) and then import from Thunderbird into Mail.

  • by mende1,

    mende1 mende1 Feb 26, 2013 2:16 PM in response to Teebox17
    Level 10 (93,329 points)
    Desktops
    Feb 26, 2013 2:16 PM in response to Teebox17

    Wow. I don't know why, but Migration Assistant often fails. However, I'm not completely sure if that's the normal behaviour of Migration Assistant with mailboxes migrated from Outlook (I doubt it)

  • by SwankPeRFection,

    SwankPeRFection SwankPeRFection Feb 26, 2013 2:16 PM in response to Teebox17
    Level 4 (1,435 points)
    Feb 26, 2013 2:16 PM in response to Teebox17

    If your friend prefers to use Outlook instead, then just have them buy Office for Mac 2011 with Outlook in it and then just grab the old PST file off their old system and simply import it into the new Outlook for Mac.  Once you've done that, you'll just have to do some minor moving around of the folders from the Imported area to the main mailbox area.  The rest of the structure/contents all stay the same.