Export WLM messages to text file

I want to archive my email each month to a plain text file. WLM has
File | Save As for this but I can't select more than one file at a
time when using it.

The way I used to do this with OE was File | Export | Messages, which
sends them in bulk to Outlook 2000, where I CAN use File | Save As on
all the files at once.

However when I try this approach using WLM, I get "Windows Live Mail
was unable to export all of your messages. Your disk may not have
enough space for all the exported messages, or some of the messages
you're exporting may be corrupted."

I know I have plenty of space on my drive, and the Outlook 2000 PST
file is less than 1MB in size. Plus this process still works fine
from OE.

Does anyone know what the problem is? Or is there an alternate way to
do this?

Thanks

All your mail is actually saved as text by default in WLM.
Try browsing to C:\Documents and Settings\[user name]\Local
Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail\[folder name]

Where user name = your windows login account
folder name = the WLM account you want to browse

Once there you should see a whole bunch of text files, simply right click
and open in notepad or some other text reader.

Colin Brown
WL MVP

<davepkz@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:83e71179-82f2-40cd-a349-2d8de27a4ce2@xxxxxx

On May 21, 3:19 pm, "Colin Brown WLMVP" <Hackerso...@xxxxxx>
wrote: True however there are two advantages to the Outlook Save As approach:

1. The .eml files are separate files per email and are not named
intuitively. Using Outlook's Save As with a batch of files I can
easily generate a single appropriately named file to group all
messages of a given topic.

2. Outlook's Save As only includes the basic From, To, Date, and
Subject in the header. The .eml files have some 25 lines of header,
making them harder to read (especially if concatenated as described in
point #1).

In any case, I don't understand why the File | Export | Messages |
Microsoft Exchange isn't working (for me) in WLM.

Thanks for the reply.

Can I ask what the purpose of the "archive" is, i.e. what function does it
serve in your environment.

You need to be running MAPI (Mail Application Program Interface) to save in
MS Exchange format, one would normally get that via installing a MAPI
client, I think MS Exchange Server ships with such a thing, I doubt that
MAPI would be any more eyeball readable that WLM format (.eml)

Files with an .eml extension are "readable" in the sense that they are ASCII
text. However, it is intended they they be accessed via a mail client, such
as WLM. It is not intended that they be read using a text processor such as
Notepad - if that were so then they would have an extension of .txt. Export
to WLM format essentially copies the file from WLM's so called message store
to the file you designate.



<davepkz@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:e51d679a-bef0-4492-9dcc-46550867e708@xxxxxx

File/Export/Messages/Microsoft Exchange exports files to Outlook without requiring MS Exchange Server's installation.
- if not attempted earlier it will use the default Outlook Profile
- if already attempted a prompt for the Profile(since it already found it prior) will be added to the steps.

I suspect the purpose since it is apparent that WLM and Outlook are both installed/available/familiar, is to avoid the extra
content added by WLM to an eml file, thus export to OL and 'Save As' in a more legible(the op's perception) format for reference or
archiving.
Also Outlook provides are variety of 'save-able' formats.. txt, oft(template), msg, htm, html, mht.

An Outlook message saved as a txt file might looks like this
From: Sender@xxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, May 21, 2008 1:22 AM
To: Winston
Subject: RE: Anything

This is the entire content of this message. EOM.

Whereas the same eml message opened as a text file includes all the headers content(identical to selecting a
message/properties/message source) in addition to the message body content.

While opening a eml message is primarily intended to be accomplished with WLM, that method doesn't always preclude another method
for a desired or comfortable purpose.

--
...winston
ms-mvp mail


"Urbane.Tiger" <viking.warrior@xxxxxx> wrote in message news:Tq2dnTNQfYfJZanVnZ2dnUVZ_hzinZ2d@xxxxxx

Yes, Winston is correct in my case. I have many years of email
archives stored in simple text documents so they can be read without
dependence on any email viewer. I want to be able to continue to add
to these archives.

I'll try to focus my question again:

1. The File | Save As | TXT file command works perfectly, except WLM
only allows me to save one file at a time. Does anyone know how to do
this in bulk (as in Outlook 2000, where I can select many emails and
use File | Save As) ?

2. If not, I know I can do it easily enough by first exporting to
Outlook. So why does WLM's File | Export | Messages | MS Exchange
give an apparently incorrect error message about drive space, while
the same command with OE works fine? Has anyone else been able to get
File | Export | Messages | MS Exchange to work in WLM?

Thanks again

WLM will export to Outlook 2003 and newer.
Do you have an Exchange server setup?
Just having Outlook does not mean that Exchange is setup.
--
Ronald Sommer

<davepkz@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:299edb59-a9e6-40d3-bea4-6ce5accddca7@xxxxxx

I have Outlook 2000. I thought an export to Exchange was independent
of which email client will read from Exchange. Not true?

I don't really know much about Exchange configuration, but I do know
that OE has performed the same operation (File | Export | Messages |
Exchange) successfully on this PC for 4 years (and still does work
fine). Isn't that evidence that Exchange is configured properly for
this operation? It would seem that if there were no Exchange server
then OE could not export to said server.




On May 24, 11:35*am, "Ron Sommer" <rsom...@xxxxxx> wrote: