Users with LARGE OE mail folders

Does anyone have experience (positive or negative) migrating a user
from Outlook Express to WLMD with a myriad of LARGE outlook express
folders?

What is the migration process? How long would I expect it to take if
the user has 5000+ messages in his store (Pack rat I know, but not an
option to delete.)

Any reccomended steps (aside from backing up the store folder :-) ) to
tackling such an issue. I don't even want to approach this until I get
some idea of what to expect.

Hi, guysonit.

First, please lose the "D" in WLMD. That was retired last May - although MS
still hasn't got around to deleting it from the name of this newsgroup.
Whenever I see WLMD these days, my mind immediately asks whether it was a
typo, or if the poster really is that far behind. ;^{

The migration process is pretty straightforward - and almost simple and
intuitive. Just download WLM and install it. If it doesn't detect and
import your OE message store automatically, then use File | Import |
Messages | OE6 and Browse to your folder. Then DON'T click All Folders
because there's no point in Importing your newsgroup messages; you'll have
to download those again later, anyhow. You probably don't want Deleted
Items either and maybe some other folders, but that's up to you.

One fly in the ointment, especially if you are migrating to Vista, is that
WLM will not be able to even SEE your OE store folder until you give
yourself permission. Until then, it will simply tell you that there are no
such files there. If you hit this roadblock and need help, post back.

The Import process did take a long time for me; I probably have at least as
many messages as you. OE stores all the messages for a single folder
(Family, for example) in a single .dbx file (Family.dbx), along with an
index file called Folders.dbx. WLM (and WM) stores each message as an
individual .eml file. So if you have 1,000 messages from Mom in Family.dbx,
WLM will store each one in a separate file with a computer-generated name
like 74F55013-00000001.eml, which gives no clue as to the content or sender
of the mail. There's a lot of overhead involved in extracting all those
separate files and storing them individually, so it might take hours to
Import them all. But it's a one-time procedure. After that, you get the
payoff. A single bad byte can destroy a large .dbx file, costing all the
messages in that OE folder; in WLM, only the one message might be lost.

If you are a belt AND suspenders kind of guy, you can run OE and WLM
side-by-side indefinitely, each with its own message store. You can even
set both programs to "Leave a copy of the message on the server" for several
days. I have WM and WLM each leave a copy for 14 days so that both stores
will be complete so long as I run each program at least once every couple of
weeks and collect my mail. All except Sent Items, that is. Neither program
knows about mail I send from the other, so I have to preserve that folder in
each of them.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
rc@xxxxxx
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail 2008 in Vista Ultimate x64)

"guysonit" <bill.kunkel@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:02396f8c-5327-455f-889b-63c04009a427@xxxxxx

A little late perhaps for your needs, but I thought this could help others
that may need to know.

I installed WLM last weekend and it automatically converted all of my
accounts and brought over my message store in a little over 2 hours. This
included 10 POP3 and 4 Hotmail email accounts, with 190 folders and almost
265,000 messages.

I'm running WinXP sp2 on a 1.7GHz Pentium w/2GB ram and plenty of disk
space.

The only problem I had with the install was it failed at first and required
I download a patch, since I was using Office 2003. Sorry, I don't have the
link to the patch, but I just googled for Windows Live Mail install failure
and found it.

I half expected to have a problem with this large message store, but it
worked fine and everything appears to be intact.
--
ric

"guysonit" <bill.kunkel@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:02396f8c-5327-455f-889b-63c04009a427@xxxxxx