Migrating Outlook Express database to another mail client

Question

I have a big mail archive (about 10GB) from the beginning of 2000x in my Microsoft Outlook Express. This client is very old and sometimes it is not usable to work with it.

I tried to import my mail database to Microsoft Outlook, but unfortunately it supports maximal size of mail database 1GB.

Is there any alternative way to migrate this database to Microsoft Outlook or any open-source analogues like Mozilla Thunderbird?

Please, answer if you have real experience.

Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

Mail corruption begins at 1gb in Outlook, so do not try to import all that data into one Outlook account. I have heard Office 2007 and 2010 are more tolerant of large email stores, but cannot say how large.

Here is a free program that can handle very large email data stores.

http://www.eudora.com/

They have a forum and FAQ to help answer questions like how to import OE to Eudora. http://eudorabb.qualcomm.com/showthread.php?t=7682

Here is the tutorial to import from Outlook, but is similar for OE http://www.eudora.com/techsupport/tutorials/win_outlookimport.html

Answer 2

Create a Gmail account and enable IMAP, then setup Outlook Express to sync with only one folder (Create a folder called Sync). Put the email to be uploaded there and it will sync with Gmail.

Once in Gmail do the same setup from the new mail client like Outlook to get it from Gmail to the new client. If the maximum size of email exceeds what is allowed in Outlook, then you may have to create multiple Archive files and move the mail accordingly.