OT: Microsoft mail migration

[Bill]

The scenario is a bunch of Win 7 Pro computers in a small business that
need to inherit emails, contacts, calendars and so on from the old Win
XP network.

The old system was odd in that 2 users ran Outlook 2003 for the calendar
and contacts, but used Outlook Express for email. The other users just
used Outlook Express. They all, for some reason not disclosed to me,
hated Outlook for email.

The decision was taken to try to move them all to Windows Live Mail on
Win 7 even though MS Office 2007 is installed on all machines.

We used MS Easy Transfer and have imported the emails into Live Mail,
which worked in a very unwieldy way, and have exported the Outlook
Calendar from the old machine as a csv file, but can't find how to
import this into Live Mail.
Similarly there doesn't seem any intuitive way to import contacts.

Has anyone any clues? As always, I think I must be missing something
obvious.
--
Bill

[Philip Herlihy]

In article <4K55i7Ie...@itsound.demon.co.uk>, Billa...@gmail.com
says...

If you're using the latest version of Windows Live Mail (with the
ribbon) then there is an 'import' button on the ribbon when you're
looking at the Contacts section. (Windows Live Mail has removed crucial
support for 'quoting' in its handling of newsgroups and is now useless
for this, but is otherwise a perfectly adequate and secure replacement
for Outlook Express). There doesn't appear to be a facility to import
Calendar items, but I see you can "synchronise" calendars with the
Hotmail calendar at http://calendar.live.com, and you can import an ICS
file into that!

--

Phil, London

[Tony Houghton]

In <MPG.29892a12e...@news.demon.co.uk>,

Philip Herlihy <bounc...@you.com> wrote:

> (Windows Live Mail has removed crucial support for 'quoting' in its
> handling of newsgroups and is now useless for this, but is otherwise a
> perfectly adequate and secure replacement for Outlook Express).

Have you ever tried subscribing to a chatty (ie long threads) mailing
list where nearly everyone is using MS clients? <Shudder>

--
TH * http://www.realh.co.uk

[Bill]

In message <slrnjhuo...@realh.co.uk>, Tony Houghton <h...@realh.co.uk>
writes

Well I have, but usually the semi-technical ones. Some of the MSVP's
seem a bit out of their depth - I tried explaining to one that no, midi
had not replaced the obsolete asio, but it was hopeless. Where do you
start with something like that? There's also usually a huge amount of
traffic from people having problems (surprise).

It's much better to ask real people here, and hope they don't get fed up
with me.

I think we are going to have a strong push to move the people I'm
"assisting" to Outlook rather than Live Mail

Thanks to Philip for the pointer to the 'import contacts' button in Live
Mail. I don't know how I missed that.
--
Bill

[Rob Morley]

On Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:57:34 +0000
Bill <Billa...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks to Philip for the pointer to the 'import contacts' button in
> Live Mail. I don't know how I missed that.

"New Improved" human interface design from Microsoft, that's how.

[Bill]

In message <1gqaYzXu...@itsound.demon.co.uk>, Bill
<Billa...@gmail.com> writes

>I think we are going to have a strong push to move the people I'm
>"assisting" to Outlook rather than Live Mail

OMG as the youngsters say, I've just Googled move OE on XP to Outlook on
W7 64-bit, and what a mess it all is. Looks like a 2-stage process at
least. Next stage is to check we can move Calendar data between Outlook
versions across OS's.

I never cease to wonder at how MS can sell this stuff at "professional"
prices without basic conversion processes between their various similar
products.

I'm definitely sticking with Open Office etc. here.
--
Bill

[Philip Herlihy]

In article <slrnjhuo...@realh.co.uk>, h...@realh.co.uk says...

Vastly prefer it! (With the exception of the latest WLM, which has
removed >quoting of earlier posts). I couldn't understand what all the
fuss about top- versus bottom- posting was until I realised that a lot
of people use news clients which truncate threads at the signature, so
if you top-post you amputate everything else. Of course, newsgroup users
have a lot of folk who've been using them for decades (I started in
1985) so habits are established (and some will refer you to 'holy'
scripture to prove that top-posting is an evil work of Satan).
Nevertheless, most email clients put 'reply' text at the top, so you see
what's new first. Seems much better to me. Just my 2p worth (and it's
unlikely to be worth 4p).

--

Phil, London

[Jeff Gaines]

On 25/01/2012 in message <MPG.298a88a42...@news.demon.co.uk>

Philip Herlihy wrote:

>Nevertheless, most email clients put 'reply' text at the top, so you see
>what's new first. Seems much better to me. Just my 2p worth (and it's
>unlikely to be worth 4p).

They put the cursor at the top so you can scroll down, trim and reply
in-line surely ???

--
Jeff Gaines Wiltshire UK
I take full responsibility for what happened - that is why the person that
was responsible went immediately.
(Gordon Brown, April 2009)

[Jaimie Vandenbergh]

On 25 Jan 2012 21:57:34 GMT, "Jeff Gaines"

<jgaines...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

>On 25/01/2012 in message <MPG.298a88a42...@news.demon.co.uk>
>Philip Herlihy wrote:
>
>>Nevertheless, most email clients put 'reply' text at the top, so you see
>>what's new first. Seems much better to me. Just my 2p worth (and it's
>>unlikely to be worth 4p).
>
>They put the cursor at the top so you can scroll down, trim and reply
>in-line surely ???

Microsoft clients put a blank line at the top, then your signature,
*then* the previous mails in the chain. Suuuuuuuuuckage.

Cheers - Jaimie
--
"A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then
quietly strangled." - Sir Barnett Cocks (1907-1989)

[Chris French]

In message <xn0htj1g9...@news.individual.net>, Jeff Gaines
<jgaines...@yahoo.co.uk> writes

>On 25/01/2012 in message <MPG.298a88a42...@news.demon.co.uk>
>Philip Herlihy wrote:
>
>>Nevertheless, most email clients put 'reply' text at the top, so you see
>>what's new first. Seems much better to me. Just my 2p worth (and it's
>>unlikely to be worth 4p).
>
>They put the cursor at the top so you can scroll down, trim and reply
>in-line surely ???
>

Have to say, when at sitting at a PC, I'm happy to snip, reply inline,
at the bottom or whatever. but really it's only people on Usenet (which
I generally read on the pc) who care much about it still it seems -
except for snipping long posts(and probably some more techy e-mail
lists, but I don't read those)

But on my phone (and much of my mail is read on the phone nowadays)
that's all rather a palaver, and I normally just replay at the top.
--
Chris French, Leeds

[Clive George]

On 26/01/2012 00:19, Chris French wrote:

> Have to say, when at sitting at a PC, I'm happy to snip, reply inline,
> at the bottom or whatever. but really it's only people on Usenet (which
> I generally read on the pc) who care much about it still it seems -
> except for snipping long posts(and probably some more techy e-mail
> lists, but I don't read those)

Mailing lists in digest form really suffer from top-posting mail chains.
That and usenet is where I'm careful - work email is always top-posted :-(.

[Philip Herlihy]

In article <6-ydndDLZ73SKL3S...@brightview.co.uk>,
cl...@xxxx-x.fsnet.co.uk says...

Sure; if our immortal words here are going to be preserved as a digest
then it's certainly an advantage if posts are appended at the bottom.
But that isn't the primary use of newsgroups - they are a conversation,
and I find it wearying to scroll to the bottom of each post to see if
there's anything new of interest. I always found it much easier to whip
through top-posted threads, as I do with email.

Jamie commented that MS clients give you a blank line, your signature
and then the history. I don't see anything wrong with that if you're
going to top-post. I couldn't understand what all the passion was about
until I learned (years after my first defence of top-posting) that some
news clients truncate at the signature. That's certainly annoying,
although having to put up with all that scrolling to see new additions
because of a questionable convention enshrined in software isn't
something I welcome. But it's only a preference (not the will of
Allah**) so since I found out about that I've been content to bottom-
post.

One of my pet hates is inline commenting. Fine up to that point, but
any further posts are likely to be all but unintelligible. The blame
probably lies with the previous poster, who put too many unrelated
controversial assertions in one posting!

**Other prophets are available.

--

Phil, London

[Jaimie Vandenbergh]

On Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:10:42 -0000, Philip Herlihy
<bounc...@you.com> wrote:

>Jamie commented that MS clients give you a blank line, your signature
>and then the history. I don't see anything wrong with that if you're
>going to top-post.

My own preference is interspersed, but I'll always follow the local
style - I'm an accomodating type.

But the local style is created by what people see being done: and if
their software encourages top-posting by putting an empty space and
the signature at the top of the page, then they're pre-conditioned to
top post.

It's one of Microsofts myriad small crimes against succesful
communication.

Cheers - Jaimie
--
If you haven't got time to RTFM, you haven't got time to whine about it.

[Rob Morley]

On Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:10:42 -0000

Philip Herlihy <bounc...@you.com> wrote:

> I find it wearying to scroll to the bottom of each
> post to see if there's anything new of interest. I always found it
> much easier to whip through top-posted threads, as I do with email.
>

A decent client will give the option to initially hide quoted text,
so you only see the new comments, then unhide the quoted text if you
want context.

[Philip Herlihy]

In article <20120126122233.0c8160e0@bluemoon>, nos...@ntlworld.com
says...

That sounds promising. What clients do that?

--

Phil, London

[Tony Houghton]

In <1gqaYzXu...@itsound.demon.co.uk>,

Bill <Billa...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I think we are going to have a strong push to move the people I'm
> "assisting" to Outlook rather than Live Mail

Outlook's horrendous too. My aunt uses it and she can't send emails to
my mother because it auto "corrects" the .co.uk to .com and won't let
her edit it back.

[Tony Houghton]

In <MPG.298a88a42...@news.demon.co.uk>,

Philip Herlihy <bounc...@you.com> wrote:

> In article <slrnjhuo...@realh.co.uk>, h...@realh.co.uk says...
>>

>> Have you ever tried subscribing to a chatty (ie long threads) mailing
>> list where nearly everyone is using MS clients? <Shudder>
>
> Vastly prefer it! (With the exception of the latest WLM, which has
> removed >quoting of earlier posts). I couldn't understand what all the
> fuss about top- versus bottom- posting was until I realised that a lot
> of people use news clients which truncate threads at the signature, so
> if you top-post you amputate everything else. Of course, newsgroup users
> have a lot of folk who've been using them for decades (I started in
> 1985) so habits are established (and some will refer you to 'holy'
> scripture to prove that top-posting is an evil work of Satan).
> Nevertheless, most email clients put 'reply' text at the top, so you see
> what's new first. Seems much better to me. Just my 2p worth (and it's
> unlikely to be worth 4p).

That works OK in a brief exchange between 2 people, but not in a long
thread with many subscribers. Bottom posting without bothering to snip
is nearly as bad, and that's the trouble. Selecting quoted text to
delete is clumsy in many email clients, but the way MS ones reformat the
text if you touch it, blithely ignoring the difference between quoting
characters and "reflowable" punctuation, turns threads into scrambled
eggs. What people are replying to is important to give the new text
context, but it can be a hell of a job working out who said what.

[Daniel James]

In article <tCs8w2Z0...@itsound.demon.co.uk>, Bill wrote:
> I've just Googled move OE on XP to Outlook on
> W7 64-bit, and what a mess it all is.

The easy way is to install Outlook on the XP machine and migrate the
data there, then move the Outlook .pst file to the Win7 machine.

The nightmare starts when the Win7 machine has only been bought because
the XP machine has died, and the data that must be migrated exist only
as a backup ...

> I never cease to wonder at how MS can sell this stuff at
> "professional" prices without basic conversion processes between
> their various similar products.

OE isn't a "professional" product ... and isn't at all similar to
Outlook proper (except superficially in appearance).

I agree, though, they should think these things through better.

Cheers,
Daniel.

[Daniel James]

In article <MPG.298a88a42...@news.demon.co.uk>, Philip Herlihy
wrote:
> ... a lot of people use news clients which truncate threads at the
> signature, so if you top-post you amputate everything else ...

That shouldn't happen. You're not supposed to quote the signature.

You're only supposed to quote sufficient of the original text to give
context to the reply -- that is, enough to show which part of the
original your reply refers to -- not the whole thing. After all, if
you're replying to someone you should be fairly safe in assuming that he
knows what he wrote before (and it would be somewhat insulting of you to
assert that he didn't).

> ... some will refer you to 'holy' scripture to prove that
> top-posting is an evil work of Satan.

No, that's not it. The trouble is that MS mail clients don't make any
connection between the original message and its reply so it's difficult
to follow a conversation /unless/ every message contains the whole of
every other. If you're going to do that then top-posting makes a kind of
perverted sense ... but it's all down to using a broken mail client in
the first place.
--
Cheers,
Daniel.

[Tony Houghton]

In <MPG.298b53137...@news.demon.co.uk>,

Philip Herlihy <bounc...@you.com> wrote:

> Sure; if our immortal words here are going to be preserved as a digest
> then it's certainly an advantage if posts are appended at the bottom.
> But that isn't the primary use of newsgroups - they are a conversation,
> and I find it wearying to scroll to the bottom of each post to see if
> there's anything new of interest. I always found it much easier to whip
> through top-posted threads, as I do with email.

If there isn't something new in the first screenful, that's the fault of
the poster for not snipping, not the posting convention. Some
newsreaders have a control to scroll/jump to the start of the new text,
eg if you press Tab in slrn.

[Snip]

> One of my pet hates is inline commenting. Fine up to that point, but
> any further posts are likely to be all but unintelligible. The blame
> probably lies with the previous poster, who put too many unrelated
> controversial assertions in one posting!

Do you mean interleaving, like what I'm doing? True, it can be difficult
to keep track of more than 2 levels of quoting, so I'd advocate snipping
anything older. The software can help by colour-coding. Or hinder by
being an MS client without Quotefix.

[Jaimie Vandenbergh]

It doesn't do that - though I've no doubt your Aunt percieves it that
way.

Outlook, like most mail clients, operates a typeahead on names and
email addresses. If your aunt has mistyped as .com at some point, or
has your mum's email address as .com in the address book, then Outlook
does have a really irritating habit of picking the wrong address out.
But it's *always* fixable.

I'll slag off MS software design with anyone, but in this case it's a
PEBCAK issue.

Cheers - Jaimie
--
haiku are easy
but they don't always make sense
refrigerator

[Rob Morley]

On Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:31:23 -0000

Philip Herlihy <bounc...@you.com> wrote:

> In article <20120126122233.0c8160e0@bluemoon>, nos...@ntlworld.com
> says...
> >
> > On Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:10:42 -0000
> > Philip Herlihy <bounc...@you.com> wrote:
> >
> > > I find it wearying to scroll to the bottom of each
> > > post to see if there's anything new of interest. I always found
> > > it much easier to whip through top-posted threads, as I do with
> > > email.
> > >
> > A decent client will give the option to initially hide quoted text,
> > so you only see the new comments, then unhide the quoted text if you
> > want context.
>
> That sounds promising. What clients do that?
>

This one (Claws Mail) for starters, which I'm running under Linux but I
believe is available for Windows too. Also the one I used to use in
Windows, Microplanet Gravity, plus Agent, Pan, Dialog, XNews ...

[Tony Houghton]

In <kfd3i71havq1elupr...@4ax.com>,

Jaimie Vandenbergh <jai...@sometimes.sessile.org> wrote:

> On Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:10:28 +0000 (UTC), Tony Houghton
> <h...@realh.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>Outlook's horrendous too. My aunt uses it and she can't send emails to
>>my mother because it auto "corrects" the .co.uk to .com and won't let
>>her edit it back.
>
> It doesn't do that - though I've no doubt your Aunt percieves it that
> way.

It does, I've tried it. After I entered part of an address it would fill
in the rest and not let me correct it.

> Outlook, like most mail clients, operates a typeahead on names and
> email addresses. If your aunt has mistyped as .com at some point, or
> has your mum's email address as .com in the address book, then Outlook
> does have a really irritating habit of picking the wrong address out.

She's obviously used .com in the past, but she had the correct address
in the address book. Auto-completion is more convenient though and it
seems to be ignoring the contents of the address book.

> But it's *always* fixable.

Must be some sort of auto-completion cache, but fixing that is likely to
at least lose all her other auto-completed addresses. I just had an idea
though, I wonder if I could paste the correct address in and get it to
remember it.

[Bill]

In message <VA.0000059...@me.invalid>, Daniel James
<dan...@me.invalid> writes

>The easy way is to install Outlook on the XP machine and migrate the
>data there, then move the Outlook .pst file to the Win7 machine.

All mostly done now, and this is what we did as they all had Outlook on
the old machines even though they didn't use it.

The blindingly obvious thing that I missed and I haven't seen referred
to anywhere was....

First client was on holiday so we didn't want to delete any of her old
emails, so transferred them all in this 2 stage process. Took a huge
amount of time.
Second client was there, and was persuaded to delete all emails before a
certain date, and a lot of more recent ones. We then embarked on the
2-stage process without thinking and transferred the huge "Deleted
Items" folder. 3.7 gigs of emails in total, seemed to take hours.

On the Win7 machines we used "File, Open" on the pst file and later
moved the data inside Outlook. This was OK, but the File Open shows no
indication of progress of the process, and these were Dell machines with
a tiny lens some distance from the HD LED, so it was difficult to tell
when the file had finished its long, long loading.

The other time problem was caused by the number of Microsoft updates
that we had to wait for every time we restarted the machines. At least 4
separate sets of up to 34 updates at a time on each machine.

But it all seemed to work, and the dates of the emails were preserved,
which seems, from my internet reading, to be the biggest "gotcha" in
this process.

Thanks to all for the help. I still cannot understand why Microsoft
can't post clear, simple easily findable instructions on their websites.
I also asked on 2 Microsoft forums and now have been referred to many,
many pages of discussions, advice and other reading, when all it really
needed was about 6 lines of clear instructions.
--
Bill

[Jaimie Vandenbergh]

On Fri, 27 Jan 2012 09:27:13 +0000, Bill <Billa...@gmail.com> wrote:

>I also asked on 2 Microsoft forums and now have been referred to many,
>many pages of discussions, advice and other reading, when all it really
>needed was about 6 lines of clear instructions.

Please do write reply posts in those forums with the info! It'll help
other poor buggers in the future.

And here, for that matter. Unless I'm misreading, you seem to have
missed out on mentioning the blindingly obvious thing?

Cheers - Jaimie
--
>So, what do *you* do for a living?
I sit in a chair pressing small plastic rectangles with my fingers
while peering at many tiny, colored dots. -- Peter Manders

[Philip Herlihy]

In article <20120126210203.74e12176@bluemoon>, nos...@ntlworld.com

says...
>
> On Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:31:23 -0000
> Philip Herlihy <bounc...@you.com> wrote:
>
> > In article <20120126122233.0c8160e0@bluemoon>, nos...@ntlworld.com
> > says...
> > >
> > > On Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:10:42 -0000
> > > Philip Herlihy <bounc...@you.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > I find it wearying to scroll to the bottom of each
> > > > post to see if there's anything new of interest. I always found
> > > > it much easier to whip through top-posted threads, as I do with
> > > > email.
> > > >
> > > A decent client will give the option to initially hide quoted text,
> > > so you only see the new comments, then unhide the quoted text if you
> > > want context.
> >
> > That sounds promising. What clients do that?
> >
> This one (Claws Mail) for starters, which I'm running under Linux but I
> believe is available for Windows too. Also the one I used to use in
> Windows, Microplanet Gravity, plus Agent, Pan, Dialog, XNews ...

I'm using Gravity, and I've just found "mute quoted text" (Q character
applies). Neat. Thanks!

--

Phil, London

[Philip Herlihy]

In article <kfd3i71havq1elupr...@4ax.com>,
jai...@sometimes.sessile.org says...

When you start typing an address, Outlook will offer addresses you've
used before (exactly how depends on the version). If you keep typing,
that's the address that's used. If there is one in the list that you
know is wrong, just select it using the down arrow and tap the DEL key.

--

Phil, London

[Dave-UK]

"Philip Herlihy" <bounc...@you.com> wrote in message news:MPG.298cb6ab1...@news.demon.co.uk...

I've noticed that replies from people with Micro Planet Gravity always have
the name of the previous poster chopped off, so you can't tell to whom they
are replying.

[Ken]

In article <4f22ba2f$0$1547$c3e8da3$92d0...@news.astraweb.com>,
"Dave-UK", <1...@2.com> said

>
>
> I've noticed that replies from people with Micro Planet Gravity always have
> the name of the previous poster chopped off, so you can't tell to whom they
> are replying.
>
>
>

Thanks for pointing that out - I was unaware that Gravity (2.50) did
this by default. Hopefully now fixed.

--
Ken.

[Bill]

In message <h755i7lrqej8t17v8...@4ax.com>, Jaimie
Vandenbergh <jai...@sometimes.sessile.org> writes

>Please do write reply posts in those forums with the info! It'll help
>other poor buggers in the future.
>
>And here, for that matter. Unless I'm misreading, you seem to have
>missed out on mentioning the blindingly obvious thing?

No, it's my poor command of English. What I was trying to say was that
the very first task, that I missed, was to delete any unwanted
-for-posterity emails and then empty the deleted items area. In case
anyone's interested, here's what I sent to the office manager to help
with the machines she has been left to deal with. This refers to an
office that uses a mix of OE and Outlook on XP and is moving to new Win
7 machines running a newer version of Outlook:

If starting from Outlook Express

1. Delete any old unneeded emails in all directories, then empty
"Deleted
Items".
2. Make sure Outlook is installed on the old machine. If not installed,
you
need to install a version, but not necessarily activate it.
3, In OE go to Export in file menu and export everything to Outlook,
then go to 4.

Here is where you start if already using Outlook (NB delete as above
first)

4. Do a search for files with the suffix .pst on the old machine. Copy
the Outlook.pst file to a thumb drive or external HD.
5. Move the thumb or HD drive to the new machine, and start the
previously installed new version of Outlook. If you trust the thumb or
HD
drive, you can leave the files there, otherwise copy the .pst file(s) to
a new
or easy to find directory. NB Not to the directory where there are
already
any .pst files (in some cases C:Windows), as I'm told this can break
things.
6. In the new Outlook menu, go to File, Open and open the .pst file from
the directory where you just put it.
7. Wait while it takes ages to open. There is no obvious indication of
progress or when it finishes, so you have to watch for the HD light to
stop
flashing.
8. At this point you should have the old files all in Outlook in a new
set of
folders listed below the existing ones. Copy the contents of all these
folders (eg Inbox to Inbox, Sent Items to Sent Items) until you have the
one
sensible folder structure. You should end up with a set of directories
that
contain all the just-moved across data and a bunch of empty folders that
were the data's temporary home. You can now remove these.

This should leave you a set of folders in Outlook that contain all the
emails
etc. stored in date order, with new emails being added as they arrive,
plus
any contacts and Calendar info.
--
Bill