“Last month I bought a shiny new Apple PowerBook to replace an ageing Windows laptop. It is faster, has a clearer screen, does a lot more and has much better battery life,” Bill Thompson writes for BBC News. “Because I use Outlook all of my precious e-mail is stored in what is called a PST file. It is a format that was created by Microsoft, is only understood properly by Microsoft, and is evidently carefully guarded by Microsoft.”
“Anyone with a suspicious mind would think that Microsoft wanted to make it hard for users to make the switch from Windows to Mac OS, and because they own the PST format they have decided to do this by failing to provide a migration tool,” Thompson writes. “…because the format is not published. And this makes it hard to get things to work.”
Thompson writes, “Microsoft benefits, even if the reason for the lack of migration tools is simply that the PST files are too complicated and messy to be easily converted to industry-standard mail files that can be read by other programs. I am technically literate, and yet I am finding it hard to get rid of my Windows laptop. Someone less confident than me would probably have given up by now, or simply been deterred by the prospect of having to mess around with migration tools.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Microsoft guarding a proprietary format to keep users locked on Windows? Say it ain’t so!
Little Machines’ US$10 “Outlook2Mac” has worked for us in the past for moving Windows Outlook email, contacts, and calendar appointments from Windows PCs to Macs. More info here.
the only response i have is…duh. If it’s worth it to you to spend a few bucks take a look at outlook 2 mac.
http://www.littlemachines.com/
This BBC analyst is a cock at the best of times, needlessly Apple bashing when he gets the chance.
Hey, it’s no better than protected AAC files which they won’t share to other companies and thus forces you into iTunes/iPod
Didn’t Microsoft just release a tool to import the PST files into entourage?
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/
Not sure if it works with the PC pst format or not though? It just mentioned Outlook 2001 for the Mac but its a PST file so it may work.
That link didn’t work completely!
Click on the link in that last post and then click on the Entourage link down the left column and the PST import utility is shown on the right side of the entourage page.
-Dan
Pretty sure the “duh” was uncalled for gforce. The author of the article was pointing out the fact that instead of using an easily ported file format for a persons critical CRM data they use a highly cryptic, notoriously unstable, and pretty useless file format to store some of your most valuable information.
It’s great Little Machines has circumvented this for a mere $10.
It doesn’t change the fact that circumvention is necessary despite the fact a version of Outlook ( a piss poor version I admit) is already on the Mac. Wouldn’t it be much easier to Export to Entourage and then subsequently export directly to Mail? Or, heaven forbid, Outlook right to Mail with no third party software solutions required?
Crazy I know.
“Import Outlook 2001 for Mac Data
Use the free .PST Import Tool to migrate your Outlook 2001 data to Entourage 2004.
Download the tool”
So does that mean that users of other versions of Outlook are ass out?
Thanks Microsoft for always putting the customer first.
Note: Outlook2Mac does NOT convert Outlook Express, only Outlook – I own a copy and it says so on their FAQ. So if you need Outlook Express conversion use Emailchemy instead.
I use an external USB 20 G drive to copy all the below backed up files to the Mac. Email me if you need help. I have documented the following steps for switchers:
Documents – Copy C:\My Documents to User\Documents
Email – Launch Outlook Express Addresses from C:\Windows\Application Data\Microsoft\Address Book\???.wab and drag vCards to backup folder then import into Address Book
Copy Mail from C:\Windows\ Application Data\Identities\???\Microsoft\Outlook Express to backup folder and convert with Emailchemy into Mail.app format then import into Mail
Get the email account details from the Internet Control Panel
Email address: Pop server: User account: SMTP server:
Office – Install latest Macintosh Office
Printer – Record printer name and ensure it is USB enabled and has a Mac driver, otherwise inform client
Internet dialling – Get the ISP account details from the Internet Control Panel getting Configuration Name: User Name: Phone Number: Password: DNS: Proxy:
Internet Explorer – Drag and drop the internet favourites from C:\Windows\Favourites\ into Safari
Retype the default home page into Safari:
Wallpaper – Copy any wallpaper images to the Pictures folder and set Desktop System Preferences to cycle through wallpapers
This covers 90% of switchers!!!
“This BBC analyst is a cock at the best of times, needlessly Apple bashing when he gets the chance.”
Do you guys actually reading the articles before you start bitching about “Apple bashing”? This guy is clearly taking some digs at MS if anything. Geez guys, relax. Not all tech pundits are the enemy, some actually like to highlight Redmonds shortcomings from time to time. And the guy said he bought a Mac. What’s wrong with you people?
The PST import utility only works with PST files created from Outlook 2001. http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.aspx#Office2004
The work around is to use Outlook 2001 to import Windows’ PST file and then copy your files into a newly created PST in Outlook 2001. Finally then you can use PST Import Utility to import emails.
Sounds like fun huh? Thanks MS–Blah!
It’s true that Outlook stores is files in a proprietary format, so of course you can’t just copy the source file over to a Mac and expect it to work. However, Outlook does let you export your emails into at least nine different formats which can then be imported into Mail.
“Let us hope that as part of their new commitment to openness the programmers at Microsoft start work on a comprehensive set of migration tools for older file formats.
After all, if Microsoft thinks its software is simply better and more usable than everyone else’s, they should have no reason to hold on to their customers by unfair means.
Or am I missing something? “
Wow look out for all that Apple bashing……
A tad bit defensive aren’t we?
as I think this over, I guess I’m not sure if it’s as easy as I stated above. I know that you can export outlook emails into many different formats, but as regards to importing them into Mail, since I’m not by my Mac I can’t try anything at the moment. I do know that somehow it’s possible, but I can’t remember how I did it before.
Russel – there is a huge problem with your protected AAC argument; you can run iTunes on either Mac OS X or Windows. Apple is not locking you into their OS with protected AAC files. Micro$oft, on the other hand, is locking you into their OS with their Outlook proprietary format.
Russell said:
“Hey, it’s no better than protected AAC files which they won’t share to other companies and thus forces you into iTunes/iPod”
bad example, since AAC is a public file format, not an Apple proprietary one.
If you’ve got that many contacts that you absolutley can’t live without, I dunno. Try BBedit or something, and cut n paste what you can. Or better yet, ditch HD based email programs altogether and just use hotmail,yahoo,google… there are hundreds of web based emails services out there that work quite well.
Outlook. What a POS ugly program.
Outlook 2001 for the Mac requires an Exchange server, but if there is one available importing the PC PST file, export to a Mac PST file, then import it into Entourage. I have thousands of emails in a PC PST file that I would love to transfer over, but I don’t have an Exchange server to use. Any ideas here???
Outlook2Mac works great, but it strips out the folder tree, so each folder is on the top level. If you don’t mind reconstructing this, it works great.
I transferred some over by signing up for a free IMAP service at runbox.com, setting up the IMAP server in Mail or Entourage, and load the emails up to the IMAP, then downloading them again. It was a pain, but it also works.
I really don’t understand why this isn’t built into Entourage, they are both MSFT products, aren’t they??
Anyone have an Exchange server I can log onto temporarly?
David
Outlook2Mac worked well for me.
I still don’t like that Mail in Panther doesn’t have nested folders.
1)You can install Mozilla on your PC, import your Outlook data, and then copy the resulting .mbox files to your mac, and then import them to OSX mail. It’s that easy (and free). Leave it to open source/free apps to be the best
2)I hope Mail (or Thunderbird) adds full MS Exchange support. That feature is holding a lot of people back.
Funny, I’m going through this very same bullshit as we speak.
I have a new client that can only email me contacts as ‘.msg’ format from Outlook running on his PC. Outlook 2004 on the Mac doesn’t know what to do with the Outlook ‘.msg’ files. M$ you f**king ass**les!
Anyway, I have a old Hell box with Linux and winblows XP that I receive the emails on in Outhouse 2003, then drag them to the ‘Contacts’ folder, then select them in the ‘Contacts’ folder and “forward” them as ‘vCards’ in a email to be picked up by my precious Mac. Quite a lot of convolution I know. Refer to “M$ you f**king ass**les!” above.
But the story doesn’t end there: If you open these Outlook (PC) vCards with Outlook 2004 (Mac), all the notes vanish! You can however open the vCards in Apple’s Address Book and all the notes are intact! Rock on Apple.
And for those of you who may have missed it: M$ you f**king ass**les!
I use a program called Emailchemy to convert my email from any one format to another. I used it when I switched originally from Entoruage to Mail.app, and when I moved again to try something else. Great program. Works on both Windows and Mac. It has helped some of my switcher friends.
I just sent this letter to the BBC:
Bill Thompson, PLEASE GET A GRIP ON YOURSELF! Why are you making this so much more difficult on yourself than it needs to be?!?! As a new Mac user, you need to familiarize yourself with the resources of being a Mac user… namely, versiontracker.com. That website keeps track of almost every single Macintosh program ever created. If you type in “Outlook” on that website, you will find “Outlook2Mac”, a $10 shareware program available at <http://www.littlemachines.com> that will seamlessly bring over all of your Outlook data onto your Mac — into your CHOICE OF MACINTOSH EMAIL CLIENTS!
If that doesn’t do the trick for you, please visit macosxhints.com, and type in the search words “outlook windows pst”. You will get 4 different tips & tricks on how to bring over your Outlook data onto your Mac.
Other great Mac resources include the outstanding Apple Discussion Boards on Apple’s website (http://discussions.info.apple.com/), macslash.com, MacNN.com, MacFixit.com, MacMinute.com, macsurfer.com, and many more.
Please! This is a piece of cake for you to move over your emails!
I also think that if Apple does mac ‘dual boot’ macs, I think that the default boot OS will of course be OS X.
I also think that they could make it easy or VERY difficult to switch OS’s – depends on Steve’s outlook on this.
Another thing is I also think that the future of the pc industry will be dual or even tri boot systems (OS X, Longshite and Linux)
Back in OS 9 days, I had (still have) PST files from an old job computer running Windows. M$ said there was PST compatibility between the Windows PST and Outlook 2001. There may be, but Outlook 2001 required that you actually connect to an Exchange server to import the PST – even if you just wanted your e-mail remain local to your machine. So if you don’t have Exchange access, you’re screwed.
It’s these kinds of hoops that pretty much keep us from making the switch easily.
This isn’t too disimilar to AOL. But at least now AOL allows you to migrate your e-mail to Mail (something I’ve never tried, and never will unless a relative needs to try).