[Dovecot] Converting Outlook .PST's

[Denis Cardon]

Hi all,

if you have a few bucks to spend, you may use the emailchemy software 
(http://www.weirdkid.com/products/emailchemy/). It is not free but it 
once saved my day on an Outlook Express 2GB+ mbx folder (yes it is 
possible...) : Outlook Express was itself unable to transfert to imap 
(completly screwed) and converting to thunderbird using MAPI also 
failed. The emailchemy software on the other hand did work flawlessly.

Cheers,

Denis

Disclaimer : I have no relation to weirdkid.com other than using their 
software once.
> On Mon, 15 Oct 2007, Ilo Lorusso wrote:
>
>> [...]
>> I know the users also have large OUT LOOK pst files 4.5GIGs and 
>> wondering if
>> I could also intergrate that into IMAP?
>
> It can be done, but it is a nightmare. For post-2003(?) Outlook 
> .PST's, the only sensible, non-commercial path I could find was 
> through Thunderbird's import. Uploading directly to the server (Even 
> if you ran a local server!) was horrendously, painstakingly slow, and 
> rendered the Outlook user's computer unusable for that time.
>
> (If you're feeling lucky, Google libpst. Maybe your Outlook is old 
> enough that it supports the format.)
>
> Via Thunderbird:
>
> 1. Open all the .PST's you want to convert in Outlook, and, if 
> possible, make sure those were the only .PST's open.
>
> 2. Be sure to 'compact'/'compress' each one, to get rid of deleted 
> messages (excluding those in 'Deleted Items'. Uggh.).
>
> 3. Make sure Outlook is completely closed, and not accessing any .PST's.
>
> 4. Open Thunderbird.
>
> 5. Import mail from Outlook.
>
> This gets you mbox files with the same hierarchy that you had in 
> Outlook. I then wrote some Perl scripts to deal with these. In my 
> case, I was combining several users' folders into a single shared 
> hierarchy. Maybe you can run some mbox2maildir program and be done 
> with it.
>
> Caveats:
>
> - If possible, change the location of Thunderbird's profile directory 
> to a short path name. (e.g. C:\convert) The default path to local 
> folders:
> C:\Documents and Settings\%USER%\Application 
> Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\(random string)\Mail\Local Folders
> means that approximately 100 of your 255-character limit for filenames 
> are chewed up.
>
> - Thunderbird will mangle folder names that contain 'odd' characters. 
> I never figured out what characters caused trouble, but the following 
> were definitely OK: [A-Za-z0-9. ]
> (I found the odd foldernames running:
> find (dirname) -type d | perl -lnwe 'print if /[\da-f]{8}/'
> They always ended in a string of hexadecimal digits.)
>
> - Thunderbird doesn't seem to like non-Latin-1 headers. (I didn't find 
> this out until someone noticed it a while after the conversion.) This 
> means QP-encoded headers. (In my case, ISO-2022-JP.)
>
> Best of luck. I don't envy your task. :-)
>
> -- Ben
>


-- 
Denis Cardon
Tranquil IT Systems
44 bvd des pas enchantés
44230 Saint Sébastien sur Loire
tel : +33 (0) 2.40.97.62.67
http://www.tranquil-it-systems.fr