How to Import Outlook Express into Windows Live Mail and maintain folder structure.

[+Warwagon MVC]

How to Import Outlook Express Emails into Windows Live Mail and maintain folder structure.

 

With the discontinuation of Outlook Express / Windows Mail in Windows 7 / 8, a lot of people have been using Windows Live Mail for their email Client. Windows Live Mail works great, but there is one thing that I find annoying.

 

In previous email clients such as Outlook express or Windows Mail, when you would import email into the application it would put inbox into inbox, sent into sent and so on. This maintained your previous email structure including all of the sub folders under ?inbox?.

 

In Windows Live Mail when you import emails from applications such as Outlook Express it puts everything under an ?Imported Mail? section, separating it from your main account inside the program. If you only have a few emails or a few folders / sub-folders, it?s not THAT hard to drag and drop the emails where they are supposed to go and also to recreate the old folders.  It gets a little more difficult if you have (for example) 30 sub folders.

 

In this guide I am going to show you how to can easily merge everything that you imported in Windows Live Mail into your current email account setup inside the program.

 

Step 1) Open Windows Live Mail and configure an Email account.

 

Step 2) Import all of the emails into Windows Live Mail

 

Step 3) Exit Windows Live Mail

 

Step 4) Navigate to C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail

 

Step 5) Double click on the folder ?Storage Folders? then open the folder ?imported Items? and then ?Local folders?.

 

Step 6) Select all of the folders inside this directory and either cut or copy. (Cut will move them, copy will just make a copy of them)

 

Step 7) Now go back to C:\Users\(usename)\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail\ and double click on the folder with your account name and then paste the copied folders from step 6

 

Step 8) Now go back to C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail\ and delete the file Mail.MSMessageStore

 

This forces Windows Live Mail rebuild the email database the next time you open it.

 

Step 9) Open Windows Live Mail back up, you should now see it rebuilt the database. Once opened you should see your email folder structure back the way it was in your old Email

Client.

 

Enjoy!