Migrating mail from MS Outlook to Gnus

[romeo...@libero.it]

Hi.

I want to migrate my mail from Microsoft Outlook 2000 to emacs Gnus.
In gnus FAQ it is suggested to tell my old mail program to export the
messages
in mbox format (finding tools for that at
http://mbx2mbox.sourgeforce.net)
and then to import this mbox file into Gnus.
>From that site I downloaded the file mbx2mbox-0.34.tar.gz and installed
the package,
but didn't manage to convert mbx into mbox format. Here are the steps I
did:

1) Within MS Outlook, I did:
File > import and export > export into a file > dBase
, then selected a folder and saved it with the name myfile.mbx.

2) I downloaded mbx2mbox-0.34.tar.gz from
http://mbx2mbox.sourceforge.net
and copied into my ~/tmp dir. Then I did:

# urpmi Manip

$ cd ~/tmp

$ tar xzvf mbx2mbox-0.34.tar.gz

$ cd mbx2mbox-0.34

$ perl Makefile.PL

$ make

$ make test

# make install

, and mbx2mbox seemed to install successfully.

3) I did:

$ mbx2mbox myfile.mbx

, but the file 'myfile' which was produced is empty.

Any suggestion?

Thanks,
Rodolfo

[Tim McNamara]

Try adding

(setq gnus-agent nil)

and see if that helps.

[Reiner Steib]

Why should this help WRT to Rodolfo's mbx2mbox problem?

Bye, Reiner.
--
,,,
(o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo--- | PGP key available | http://rsteib.home.pages.de/

[Rodolfo Medina]

I worked the problem out, but in a quite laborious way:
I had to re-compose by hand the messages, extracting them from
Outlook one by one. There are tools that allow to do so
automatically, but I tried 'out2unix' and was not satisfied with it
because the original headers are not preserved but replaced by new
fictitious ones. I also heard about 'Outport', but haven't tried it
because don't know how to install it.
The problem is to extract information from the damned mailbox.pst
file where Outlook stores its mail.
I'm reporting the manual procedure I've been following.

Rodolfo

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
MS Outlook 2000

I saved the body and the headers of each single message,
one by one:
I started Outlook and opened the message. From the menu,

View > Options > Internet Headers

, and copied and pasted the headers into a file created
with Notepad and named 'message.txt' (the '.txt' extension
is automatically put by Windows, you must not put it and
won't see it until you go into Linux), located at:
'C:\rodolfo\mail-old'. Again, from the message menu,

Edit > Select All

, and copied and pasted the message body into 'message', after
the headers. Attention:

1) at the beginning of 'message' I did one empty space, then RET,
then one empty line, then RET and then the headers;
2) one empty line between the headers and the body;
3) one empty line at the end.

I rebooted the PC and entered Linux. In
'/mnt/windows/rodolfo/mail-old' there was the file 'message.txt'.
I did:
$ cd /mnt/windows/rodolfo/mail-old
$ emacs message.txt
, then cut and pasted its content into a new file named 'message'
with no extension at all. Some encoding problems might arise,
with symbols encoded by MS Windows and not recognized by emacs,
i.e. the euro sign, that appears in emacs as: '\200'
and the three dots: '\205'. I had to find them in 'message' buffer
and rewrite them. I saved 'message'. I deleted 'message.txt'.
. Then, within emacs, 'M-x gnus-unplugged', and from the group buffer:

G f message

. This way a new nndoc group was created. I entered this group and:

B c

, and the message was copied into the group I wanted.
I killed the nndoc group that had been created, quitted gnus and
restarted it.

[Rodolfo Medina]

Rodolfo wrote:

> I want to migrate my mail from Microsoft Outlook 2000 to emacs Gnus.

> [...]
>
> Any suggestion?

The following way seems to preserve the original message's headers,
so it should be fine.

From:

http://download.mozilla.org/?product=thunderbird-1.0.7&os=win&lang=it-IT

I downloaded the package `Thunderbird Setup 1.0.7.exe'
and installed it into my MS Windows xp system by simpy clicking
the icon.
I launched thunderbird and with:

Tools > Import

I imported Outlook mail into thunderbird. It took about
20 minutes for my 160 MB mail.

I started Gnus, and from the Group buffer did: `G f' and gave gnus
the following path:

/mnt/windows/Documents and Settings/rodolfo/Dati applicazioni/Thunderbird/Profiles/rmdmn2ve.default/Mail/Local Folders/Outlook Posta0.sbd/mail_folder

, where `mail_folder' is the arbitrary name of the plain text
file that corresponds to the Outlook folder you want.

Rodolfo