Windows 10: Windows 10 Mail/Windows Live Mail 2012 - can't import from OE6

Evening,

Long time lurker but first time poster here *Smile
I have been using Outlook Express 6 on my last machine (Windows XP) for a long time to check my POP mailbox. The Inbox.dbx file ended up being over 2GB in size, and OE couldn't read it. No worries, I thought I'll get around to fixing it one day - but never did.

Fast forward to now and I've just purchased a shiny new Windows 10 64-bit machine. It comes with Mail, which (in my opinion) is a horrible, un-customisable application which I really don't want to use.

I have downloaded a copy of Windows Live Mail 2012 which looks a lot better and I'd be happy to use. Issue is, I can't import my old messages from my old machine. I've copied the entire Outlook Express folder to my new machine, and tried to import my Inbox and Sent Items. However, every time I try to do this, I get the error: "No messages can be found in this folder or another application is running that has the required files open." - except I can see the files are there, and nothing else that is accessing them is actually open.

Can anyone give me some pointers here? It would be nice to migrate all my messages over to Windows Live Mail 2012 and start using it on my new machine...

Thanks in advance for any help *Smile

:)

 

Mail in Windows Live Mail 2011 - can I import to Windows 10 Mail?

Just installed Windows 10 (from 7).

All my emails are stored in Windows Live Mail 2011.

Mail in Windows 10 doesn't seem to see these and I can't see a way to import them.

I've received an email from Microsoft saying Live Mail 2011 will no longer be supported, so what do I do??? The email suggests I need to change to Outlook or Live Mail 2012, (but doesn't say how to do this), or to use Windows 10 Mail - but that's no good
if I can't import my stored mails.

Anyone any suggestions please!

Many thanks, Helen.

 

Import email accounts settings and emails from Windows Live Mail format into Mail Windows 10

I ended up re-installing Windows Live Mail 2012 and end of story. I just can't wait until Microsoft decides to add the import function into Mail app in Windows 10

 

You could try using this free backup/restore program which I used a long time back coming from OE. It can effectively transfer rules, settings, contacts, messages between programs. No need to grovel around getting bits and pieces from wherever MS has chosen to hide them.
MailStore Home – Free Email Archiving and Backup for Home Users

However if your OE msgs are corrupt and you have no backup, that's another matter.

 

Windows Live Mail 2012 is no longer supported it is a road to nowhere.

From what I remember about OE 6 was that the folders needed to be regularly compressed to stop corruption. You need all the *.DBX files including Folders.DBX to rescue those.

I just culled and moved all mine into an Outlook Mail account and that is synced with the Windows 10 Mail App.

Ultimately as a last resort you can open *.DBX files in an application like Notepad, Word etc as the substance of the Emails is in plain text.

 

Thanks for the suggestions so far. I really don't want to use the Mail application that comes with Windows 10 (by default) if I can help it - I personally think it looks horrible. At least Windows Mail is customisable.

I suspect my messages may indeed be corrupted as when the file exceeded 2GB suddenly the inbox in OE appeared empty. I have all the .dbx files but they won't import.

Does it sound like my .dbx files are corrupted?

 

If they are corrupted, can someone suggest a good (preferably free) app to recover them?

 

This is how my Outlook Express folder looks, btw (if this is any help?)

 

Before I'd give up on OE messages I'd download and install the free OE Classic. Folder size doesn't appear to have the same limit as OE.
OE Classic - Download
OE Classic - Easy to use Outlook Express replacement

 

Okay, great and thanks. Will that allow me to export my messages though?

 

Second link, Message Storage section.

 

Thanks, I'll give that a try and report back *Smile

 

Okay that seemed to work - but it imported everything but the Inbox *Sad

 

Turns out my Inbox was corrupted - for the record, I fixed it with this application:
OE-Mail Recovery - Outlook Express mail recovery tool
Thanks for all the help and suggestions, much appreciated *Smile