Migrating your mail to Mac

Whilst the processes and suggestions I make here are not destructive, I strongly recommend that you ensure that you have a full and proven backup of your files and email, before you start this process. You can never be too careful. If you are looking for a good cross platform backup you might consider Mozy which offers 2Gb of online storage for free, and is very reasonable for unlimited storage.

If like me you have a mountain of historic and archived email in Outlook (if you use Thunderbird, then see my the section about using other email mail program), when you migrate to your Mac you're going to want to take it with you...This post will be of use to you if you're migrating from Outlook on Windows, to a Mac Mail program including Apple Mail, Microsoft Entourage or Thunderbird.

Unfortunately migrating from Outlook this isn't as easy as it should be even if you're migrating to Entourage (i.e. from one Microsoft product to another), as unfortunately Entourage 2008 does not recognise PST files (these are the files that Outlook uses as personal folders and archive storage), so here are some suggested solutions:

Use a mail server inbox

If you are using a mail server (Exchange, Gmail, Hotmail/Live Mail etc.) which offers you enough space to temporarily store your email (you probably need enough to be able to take you mail across in a maximum of 4 or 5 goes, depending on how patient you are, and how much email you have). You may even want to set up a new account simple to aid with this process, particularly if you don't have much space available, a new Gmail account will give you around 7Gb of storage which is should mail transferring mail easier. If you prefer a Microsoft solution then Hotmail offers 5Gb of storage.

Copying mail back to your server is a simple process in Outlook, simply make a folder in your online server folder, and start to copy your archive mail over.

** Warning ** Be aware of any broadband upload limits that your ISP may have placed on your service so that you don't incur additional charges.

To transfer the mail to your Mac email program should be a simple process of configuring the software to download from your mail server (be aware that not all email programs will work with Exchange server if this is the route that you have chosen), and let the email download (you should be able to do this at the same time as you're uploading from your PC, which will save some time). Once downloaded, you can then decide to store your mail locally or stick with it online. One advantage to leaving it online is that you won't have migration issues in the future.

Use another Email Program

A really good option is to switch to an email program that is supported on both the PC and Mac. A perfect example of this is Thunderbird. If you follow this route, simply install the lastest version of Thunderbird on your Mac and PC, and follow the instructions to migrate your Outlook mail to Thunderbird, and then migrate your profile to your Mac.

Convert to MBox Format

Mbox format is an open standard for mail messages, that allows you to migrate mail between systems (sounds perfect huh!)...One downside is that Outlook doesn't support the Mbox out of the box, but there are tools that you can use to do this, the one that I used is MessageSave which allows you to convert both PST and OST (offline exchange format) to Mbox. Once in this format you can import into many different email programs, including Apple Mail or Entourage, there are also Addons to allow you to import into Thunderbird.

What the future might hold

Office 2010 on PC and Office:Mac 2011will hopefully make the process of migrating from Outlook on a PC to a Mac, but with the present schedule looking like the Mac version won't be available until the end of 2010 this will be too late for many of you.