Vista Windows Mail Problem

[Patchrunner]

Hi All,
I have a Dell inspiron 530 running Vista Ultimate. I can't get the 'windows mail' program to import my old messages (OE6) from my external hard drive, it imported my address books OK but does not recognise any of the .dbx files.
How can I get round this ? I thought of loading the old OE6 program but it will not load as it says that there is a newer version already installed (windows mail) ALL HELP AND SUGGESTIONS REALLY WELCOME

patchrunner :mad:

[RecT]

Hi Patchrunner,

I had a similar problem upgrading XP to VistaHP and found the solution on oehelp.com:


To import from the Outlook Express message store into the Windows Mail message store, do the following:
1. Create a directory under the current user's Documents, such as Documents\OEMail. This directory needs to be within the user's space, such as under Documents, in order to prevent possible access permissions problems.
2. Copy all the dbx files from one Outlook Express Identity into this directory, ensuring that folders.dbx is included.
3. Go to Edit | Select all in Windows Explorer and select all the dbx files. Then right click on the selection and choose Properties and ensure that the read only attribute of the files is unchecked.
4. In Windows Mail go to File | Import Messages and choose Outlook Express 6 format and choose to import from a directory.
5. Then use the Browse button to browse to the directory of dbx files. Make sure that when you set the directory that what is listed in the path is correct (NOTE: Vista can put the wrong path in here sometimes, so instead of c:\mypath it puts c:\mypath\mypath, so check the path to verify that it is correct, and if it is not correct then fix it by clicking the Browse button a second time and then leave the selection blank and clicking Okay.).
6. Then select the files from which you wish to import messages and click Import.

This worked for me, hope it helps!

RecT

[Patchrunner]

Hi RecT
Sorry it didn't work, I did as you suggested, but when I browsed and selected the new folder it said 'no files match......etc'

I am really stumped, how can it not recognise OE6 .dbx files ?
Am I missing something really obvious here ?

regards
Patchrunner

[RecT]

Curious - sounds like a real pickle!

When you selected the directory, did you hit 'select folder' on the folder icon or did you hit select on one of the files? You must select the folder as WMail cannot import individual dbx files.

Another option, is to use a programme called DBXpress (http://www.oehelp.com/DBXpress/) which seems to extract your individual e-mails as .eml files which can then be moved to your WMail folder manually. But I'll assume this is a last resort option as I doubt it will move contacts etc. with it.

RecT

[Patchrunner]

Hi RecT
Sorry to say that it was my fault that your advice didn't work, I checked that all of the files were not read only but the folder was, I thought that this would not matter....but it did.
I now have recovered all of my email.
Thanks very much
Patchrunner:starhit:

[RecT]

Thanks for letting us know and glad it worked out! :thumbup:

RecT

[zlatan24]

I heard about not bad application-extracting .dbx files (http://www.recoverytoolbox.com/dbx_extract.html),
repair mailboxes in Outlook Express format and extract emails, repair messages from all folders and extract .dbx files, even from Deleted Items, can work with very large files of dbx format, works with all Windows operating systems, starting from Windows 98 to Windows Vista.