Moving emails from Outlook Express to Mac OS X

There are a number of ways to get your emails over from a PC to a Mac (e.g. doing “The IMAP Shuffle” or using a program like Outlook2Mac), but you can also do it using an open source utility called DbxConv. Here’s how:

1. Download DbxConv, a free and open source application for converting Outlook’s .dbx files to the Mac Mail/Entourage format .mbx, and unzip it into a new folder on your PC’s c: drive (e.g. c:\emails).

1.a. You can download it from: http://freenet-homepage.de/ukrebs/english/dbxconv.html

2. Locate all your Outlook Express mailboxes (search for *.dbx in Windows Explorer) and copy them over into the same folder (e.g. c:\emails). If you use Outlook, you could try importing all the mail in your .pst file into Outlook Express first and then copying the .dbx files into the folder after that.

3. Open a DOS prompt window (Start Menu > Programs > Accessories > DOS Prompt) or click on Run in the Start Menu, type in ‘cmd’ and press enter.

4. Navigate to the folder you created (e.g. c:\emails).

5. Type: DbxConv *.dbx

6. All your .dbx files will be converted into .mbx format.

7. Transfer all the resulting files, using a USB stick, external hard drive or over your network to your Mac and put them in a folder (maybe on your Desktop).

8. Open Mail and select “Import Mailboxes” from the File menu. Select “Other”, then check the “Mailboxes (mbox format)” and tell Mail where you saved the transferred files.

9. Voila! All done.