importing .csv emails

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Level 1

8 points

importing .csv emails

my wife left her old job, and exported all her outlook emails to a .csv file. not contacts, actual email messages. i can't figure out how to import these into anything usable, mac mail would be ideal, gmail would be ok. anything. there's lots of info on how to import .csv contact files (i tried to input into entourage, which i have here -- i don't have outlook -- but it tried to import all the emails as contacts, which was disastrous).

it's odd, i've looked on-line and seen people advising you to export outlook emails to a .csv file. but i can't find any help on how to import them into anything!

G4 iMac, 1.25 GB RAM, Mac OS X (10.5.5)

Posted on Nov 7, 2008 8:21 AM

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Answer 1

Mulder

Level 6

8,990 points

Nov 7, 2008 8:27 AM in response to SophoclesJ

i've looked on-line and seen people advising you to export outlook emails to a .csv file.

I've never seen this; I have seen advice to export Outlook contacts as .csv files, which is normal. But email messages have their own standard format, and it's not .csv. You'd need to open those files and convert them to .mbox files or just save them as plain text files. But unless you can find a program that will convert them from plain text to .mbox, you'd be stuck with them in that format.

Mulder

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Answer 2

SophoclesJ Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 7, 2008 8:33 AM in response to Mulder

hey mulder,

yeah, it does seem odd. i haven't asked my wife who told her to do this. but i did find this online:

Subject:
Outlook - Exporting Email

Keywords:
Mail; Tips

Exporting Email from Outlook

To take your email away from Outlook and the Exchange system so that you can
use it somewhere else, this is what you do:

1. from Outlook, click on the 'File' menu then the 'Import and Export' option.
2. click on the 'Export to a file' option.
3. click on the 'Next' button - see list of possible file types.

Which file type you choose depends on where you are going with your mail.

If it is likely that you will be re-importing it into another
'Exchange/Outlook' system :
- choose the 'Personal Folder (*.pst)' format.
If you are going to re-import it into some other email system:
- choose the 'Comma Seperated Values (Windows)' option.
If you are not sure what you are going to do:
- choose one, export the file, then repeat the operation choosing the other
file type.

4. click on the 'Next' button - see list of your folders.
5. click once on your folder to export (probably 'Inbox' first).
6. ensure that 'Include subfolders' is selected.
7. click on the 'Next' button - see dialog with a suggested name and place for
your export file.
8. click on the 'Browse' button - see a save dialog onto your system.
9. locate a suitable place for the file and name it apropriately.
10. click OK - see the 'wizard' again.
11. choose your preference for duplicates (shouldn't make a difference here)
12. click on the 'Finish' button - see dialog asking you to create a password.
13. click OK (its not usually necessary to protect the file with a password.) -
see email 'copy' into the file.

Repeat the process for other needed folders - choosing appropriate file names.
Repeat the process choosing the other recommended file format if needed.

Your email is now in the named file(s). These files may be big, wrinting to CD
is the best option.

that was at this website -- http://domino.lancs.ac.uk/pub/usghelpdesk.nsf/aff64e3ca4d862fd80256801006e0a22/9 60A07B5A535A0EA80256C0E0033834D?OpenDocument

for what it's worth. doesn't matter, really. i just found some unix program that says it'll convert csv to unix, but it's above my pay grade. will continue searching, i guess. there are too may emails in this file for me to deal with them individually.

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Answer 3

Mulder

Level 6

8,990 points

Nov 10, 2008 8:03 AM in response to SophoclesJ

Did you get a trial of Office for Mac with your Mac OS X 10.4, or do you have a fully licensed version? If so, the Entourage application can import mail saved as .csv files, from which you could then export them as .mbox files to import them into Mail.

Mulder

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Answer 4

SophoclesJ Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 10, 2008 12:54 PM in response to Mulder

i tried this earlier with entourage, and i just used the test version of the newer version to try it again (as you suggested). but it only gives me the options of importing contacts from a csv file or email messages from an mbox file. if i try to do it that way, i can get the emails imported -- but their not broken up in any usable fashion (each "email" comprises multiple emails, and there's no heading info at all). do you see some way to import mail saved as .csv files? thanks!

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Answer 5

Mulder

Level 6

8,990 points

Nov 10, 2008 3:10 PM in response to SophoclesJ

Hmmm…I read somewhere that Entourage for 2004 would do this, but I've never attempted it myself; the trial download of that is still available in case you want to try it.

With .csv files, all header information, including subject and date are stripped, since that's not what the CSV format is designed for. There is a Perl application out there that may work for you, but you'd need to test it out yourself, and possibly install a small addition to Perl in order to use it. It's Unix-y, so it requires you to run it from Terminal.

Mulder

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Answer 6

SophoclesJ Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 12, 2008 8:45 AM in response to Mulder

yeah, i tried in in entourage 2004, didn't have any luck. and i also found that Perl application, but it's too Terminal-y for me. anyway, thanks for helping me out! appreciate your taking the time...

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Answer 7

rcanales

Level 1

0 points

Dec 3, 2008 12:04 PM in response to SophoclesJ

When I moved my data from Outlook to my Mac a few years ago I used a handy little program called Outlook2Mac ( http://www.littlemachines.com/). It worked great for both the contact list and the emails. You have to run it from a PC with an active Outlook account for it to grab the data from. This might be a bit of a problem for your situation since the emails have already been exported. However if you can get ahold of a PC running Outlook you could be up an running in a few clicks.

The Program cost $10, but did everything I needed it too. I didn't know you could export emails to a CSV file - for some reason I thought those were done with PST files only.

Another option for just the emails would be to import the emails back into Outlook. Then setup a new IMAP account in Outlook and drag the emails into the IMAP Inbox. Once the emails have been uploaded to the server you can add the IMAP account to mail and the emails will download to your computer. Now you can continue to just use the new IMAP account or you can then drag the files into whatever inbox account you want to from within Mail.

If you don't know what an IMAP account is, do some research. Basically all your email will stay live on a server and can be accessed from multiple computers and/or locations at the same time. Even "sent" messages can be maintained on the server with the proper account settings. Google Mail (gMail) accounts can be setup as an IMAP account under the settings tab. I use it for all my personal email now, and it's free for tons of storage.

Keep in mind if there are a lot of emails this could take some time to complete, so start the process when you can leave the computers running without interruption to the net. Also note this would be only an email transfer solution.

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