Convert Outlook Express 4.5 messages, address book to Entourage
Mac OS X, Mac OS 8
Royally Dirty Kludge

Note: The method described in 0002a is considerably easier, and it is recommended you try that first.

1. FTP MacBinary mailboxes to a PC

2. Decode them with Etresoft Decoder

3. FTP Decoded mailboxes back to Mac in raw data binary mode

4. Install Outlook Express 4.5 on Mac

5. Move mailbox files into OE4.5's main user folder and restart OE4.5

6. Make new mailboxes with the same names as the imported ones

7. Move all mail from imported mailboxes into new ones

8. Close OE4.5 and start OE5, import mail

9. Close OE5 and start Entourage, import mail

Detailed Description:
Entire hard drive contents were transferred via FTP to an OSX system, in MacBinary format.

The files were burned to CD without further modification.

When they were copied off the CD, they were still in MacBinary, and thus did not behave like normal files on the OSX system they were copied onto.

Copying Outlook Express 4.5 directly off the CD and extracting it from MacBinary with StuffIt Expander did not render it a runnable application.

Entourage X would not import from OE versions less than 5.00. Version 5.00 was on the OSX system already, in the version 9 applications folder by default. It was unable to read the mailbox files in MacBinary.

StuffIt Expander would not properly expand the mailbox files from OE4.5 (even though it seemed to expand every other kind of file, including the address book).

The address book could be imported into OE5 with no problems. It was then portable to Entourage, also with no problems.

The mailbox files were sent over to a PC running win32 and decoded with a macbinary decoder called Decoder for Windows. This time, the decoding *did* work successfully, and produced files with no extension that were OE4.5-compatible mail files. additionally, they produced very small files that appeared to be the mac os filesystem file types header information. pasting this info onto the beginning of the mail files rendered them unusable.

OE5 *still* could not read the extracted mail files (with or without the header bits that didn't work). OE4.5 could read them fine, however (after they were renamed from "Mail" to "E-Mail" on the mac), and the following procedure worked to make the messages compatible with OE5:
- Open the mailbox in OE4.5
- Make a new mailbox
- Move all the messages over to the new mailbox
Then, the newly created mailbox *was* compatible with OE5. Yay. Imported messages.

Finally, imported messages from OE5 into Entourage. Import successful. There was much rejoicing.


See also:
0002a