Import mail from Outlook for Mac to Mail

This technique worked perfectly. Thanks for posting!

Hi all,

I'm not sure if it was just due to the smaller size of my mailbox (only around 500 messages), but I found a really quick and easy solution... and it's free!

In Outlook, simply click on the mailbox an drag it onto the desktop; it becomes an mbox file. Then, import the mbox file into Mail, it should be on the right side listed as "Import", with all the mail items listed as unread. Click on the first message, then select all, then drag them into your Inbox, and right-click to mark all as read... all done!

If this has already been suggested here and I missed it, I humbly apologise... otherwise, it's a typically 'Apple' way of dealing with the problem; no mess, no fuss!

Cheers,

B.

Hi!

Thanks for the drag and import tip for Outlook 2011 to Mac Mail.

I seem to be having a problem with this........ I have the latest updates for OL and Mac Mail, running on 10.7.4 on an imac and I can drag the foler to my desktop and then import it into Mac mail as an mbox, but then when I look at the mails, they are just showing loads of text with reference within the mails to MIME format and none of the look of the original mail with the images etc.

It seems to work for loads of other people, but I have tried this on both of my Macs (imac and Macbook Pro) running the same updates and have exactly the same problems.

Any tips, please?

Thanks and Kind Regards

Andy

We're having the same problem - it seems to be related to images in the e-mail. Our solution for now is to take what we can get, and leave the Outlook folders intact in case we need to go back to them.

I'd really be grateful if anyone has a suggestion :-)

Walt

Purchase eMailchemy, it will move all of your mail, folder structure, dates and attachments intact from Outlook to anything you like (including Mac Mail)

AAGHH! - Having resisted Mac Mail because I wanted to keep with Outlook I got Office 2011 and used Outlook for Mac for a year. I finally got fed up with using Outlook for Windows idiot cousin so when upgraded to Mountain Lion I decided to go Mac Mail, and I can' believe that I put myself up such a dead end. 😠

The simple workaround mentioned above does not work for me - I suspect that either Mountain Lion or an Office Upgrade (or both) must have changed something because while I CAN export a folder to the desktop and reimport to Mac Mail as described, all the emails have "NO SENDER" and "NO SUBJECT" where the Sender and Subject should be.

Also a number of emails I tested said they could not be displayed correctly as they were mime formatted, whereas an almost identical email fom the same sender (Amex) displays perfectly when downloaded normally.

Obviously a years' worth of emails with no subject or sender info is pretty useless so i am now stuck with keeping OL 2010 limping along in case I need to refer to an old email.

I realise that Apple and Microsoft probably don't wnat to help each other much but I am pretty unhappy about being their collateral damage.

If I'd realised there was a risk that by moving to Outlook for Mac I was locking my data up I would NEVER have gone there!

Has anyone else experienced the same problem with the copy and reimport solution?

Any ideas?

windermerelodge wrote:

AAGHH! - Having resisted Mac Mail because I wanted to keep with Outlook I got Office 2011 and used Outlook for Mac for a year. I finally got fed up with using Outlook for Windows idiot cousin so when upgraded to Mountain Lion I decided to go Mac Mail, and I can' believe that I put myself up such a dead end. 😠

The simple workaround mentioned above does not work for me - I suspect that either Mountain Lion or an Office Upgrade (or both) must have changed something because while I CAN export a folder to the desktop and reimport to Mac Mail as described, all the emails have "NO SENDER" and "NO SUBJECT" where the Sender and Subject should be.

Also a number of emails I tested said they could not be displayed correctly as they were mime formatted, whereas an almost identical email fom the same sender (Amex) displays perfectly when downloaded normally.

Obviously a years' worth of emails with no subject or sender info is pretty useless so i am now stuck with keeping OL 2010 limping along in case I need to refer to an old email.

I realise that Apple and Microsoft probably don't wnat to help each other much but I am pretty unhappy about being their collateral damage.

If I'd realised there was a risk that by moving to Outlook for Mac I was locking my data up I would NEVER have gone there!

Has anyone else experienced the same problem with the copy and reimport solution?

Any ideas?

Yes, purchase and use Emailchemy for this job, it will simply and quickly do exactly what you want, no editing needed afterward, all folders / send and received dates preserved. It's crazy to try it manually, takes for ever to sort the mess out.

I used it to transfer a client's email store fom Outlook to Mail, 12 years and many hundreds of thousands of mails, thousands of nested folders. It transferred perfectly on the first attempt.

Hmm - I can't test whether that would work as the trial version will mask precisely the two field where there is a problem. Has anyone else had a smila issue and solved it since Mountain Lion with Emailchemy?

The trial version will tell you everything you need to know, the contents of some fields are replaced with reminders that you haven't paid for it but this software is in a class by itself. I have used for years because it can convert most email formats to most others. See the list below.

I convert from Entourage, Outlook for Windows and Outlook for Mac regularly, Emailchemy paid for itself the first time I used it (unless you assume that time has no value)

Well thanks Csound1!

Having wasted a day on other (free) ways of doing this I shelled out my £20 and bought Emailchemy and now have my old OL2011 data sitting in folders on my Mac Mail.

It wasn't totally plain sailing. There are a couple of bugs that mean that if you convert to Apple .mbox format you get the emails in a folder (eg xfolder) and then again in a folder below it (called xfolder.messages) but I found that by using the non Apple mbox format this didn't happen. According to the Emailchemy forum this is an Apple bug as it happens even when exporting and importing directly from and to Mail in the current version.

Testing of a random sample indicates that all has imported with the right formatting and attachments 🙂

Anyway I am now free of Outlook. I'm FREEEE !!!! 😁😁😁

Thank you. That was the best £20 I've spent this year.

windermerelodge wrote:

Well thanks Csound1!

Having wasted a day on other (free) ways of doing this I shelled out my £20 and bought Emailchemy and now have my old OL2011 data sitting in folders on my Mac Mail.

It wasn't totally plain sailing. There are a couple of bugs that mean that if you convert to Apple .mbox format you get the emails in a folder (eg xfolder) and then again in a folder below it (called xfolder.messages) but I found that by using the non Apple mbox format this didn't happen. According to the Emailchemy forum this is an Apple bug as it happens even when exporting and importing directly from and to Mail in the current version.

Testing of a random sample indicates that all has imported with the right formatting and attachments 🙂

Anyway I am now free of Outlook. I'm FREEEE !!!! 😁😁😁

Thank you. That was the best £20 I've spent this year.

I know, I didn't want to pay either but it works so well (I just used the standard .mbox so didn't have any glitches). Even if you never use it again it's worth the $20.

I have a slightly different issue (I think, since I didn't scour all 86 prior posts on this thread). I'm trying to move my "on my computer" folders in Outlook 2011 to OSX Mail (I am on Mountain Lion 10.8). I can drag a relatively small mbox file (only 63 messages) to my desktop.

After shifting to Mail, I go to File>Import Mailboxes... and select "Files in mbox format" and then Continue. At that point, I get a short message that says "preparing to import from mbox...". After about 10 seconds, I get a pop up window that says "You need to select at least one item in the list before proceeding."

The same thing happens if I select Eurdora, Apple Mail, or any of the other choices to import data from. I've rebooted the computer and there was no change.

What gives?

If it helps, here is a screen shot. As you can see, I've selected the radio button for importing mbox, but still get this odd message indicating I've not selected anything from the list. Please help me get off of Outlook 2011 -- if I can't move my archive emails to be able to search them along with what's on the server, I'll need to keep using it. Thanks!

dffoster19 wrote:

If it helps, here is a screen shot. As you can see, I've selected the radio button for importing mbox, but still get this odd message indicating I've not selected anything from the list. Please help me get off of Outlook 2011 -- if I can't move my archive emails to be able to search them along with what's on the server, I'll need to keep using it. Thanks!

There is no screenshot but ..... Buy Emailchemy and read the rest of this thread.

Thanks. I tried downloading Emailchemy earlier today...apparently my company has put some sort of block on that sort of download and I can't expand the file once it's download. Are there any other options?