Outlook Express Message Extractor
Moving mails and news from Outlook Express to another application can be quite a challenging task. Many mail clients, including Thunderbird, support the import of Outlook Express mails from the default user, while others may not even support that.
The mails of additional users will not be imported during that procedure. One great way to import all mails and all news into another email client is to convert the Outlook Express dbx files that store the mails and news into eml, Outlook Express Electronic Mail and Outlook Express News files.
All desktop email clients that I know support eml files which makes it a breeze to import mails of all Outlook Express users into another mail client. In the case of Thunderbird the extension ImportExportTools is required to import the eml files (Update: no longer available). You can however open eml files directly in Thunderbird.
The Outlook Express Message Extractor [link] is a small utility that can convert a source Outlook Express dbx file into an eml file. The application supports drag and drop and directory browsing. EML files are Outlook Express Electronic Mail files by the way.
Configuration is simple and handled on one screen. You select a source file first that you want to convert. One option to find those files is to search for .dbx files on your system.
The target directory is the location the converted files will be created in. You can either use a numbering format or use a field such as the subject when it comes to names. I suggest you pick the original subject field as it reveals information about the email which plain numbers don't.
The process will extract all messages in a single dbx file into separate eml files which means that a dbx file with 100 mails will result in 100 eml files in the selected target directory. The homepage of the developer is in German, the program interface itself is in English.
Update: You can alternatively use a program like the email backup software Mailstore Home to backup and import Outlook emails into other programs. It is probably the most versatile program of its kind for the Windows operating system. Once you have backed up your email databases, you can access them right in the program interface.
You can use the search here to find emails across databases, read emails and save attachments. Options to import a mail database into another email program are available as well.
Advertisement
You said that Outlook isn’t your main email client, so which is your main one?
I think its thunderbird
It is Mozilla Thunderbird.
Awesome! This actually solved my problem… what a stupid bug.
If this is the same bug that I’ve encountered, there may be another fix: (1) hover over open Outlook item in Taskbar, cursor up to hover over Outlook window item, and right-click; (2) this should give you Restore / Move / Size / Minimize / Maximize — choose Move or Size; (3) use your cursor keys, going arbitrarily N/S/E/W, to try to move or size the Outlook window back into view. Basically, the app behaves as though it were open in a 0x0 window, or at a location that’s offscreen, and this will frequently work to resize and/or move the window. Don’t forget to close while resized/moved, so that Outlook remembers the size/position for next time.
THANK YOU Claude!!! I could get the main window to launch but could not get any other message window to show on the desktop. You are my hero!!!!
Solved my issue! 6 years later and this is still problem…
Fantastic. Thank you. Size did the trick.
This solved my Outlook problem, too. Thank you. :)
Thank you so much, this started happening to me today and was causing big problems. You are a life saver, I hope I can help you in some way some day.
You are a god – thank you!
thanks a lot…. work like charm.. :-)
Yah…thanks Claude. I’ve been having the same problem and tried all the suggestions…your solution was the answer. It had resized itself to a 0/0 box. Cheers
Excellent post. This had me baffled even trying to accurately describe the problem. This fixed it for me.
Thank you
Thanks a lot for the article. Don’t know why it happenend, don’t know how it got fixed, but it was really annoying and now it works :-)
Thanks a lot. I was facing this issue from past 3 week. I tried everything but no resolution. The issue was happening intermittently and mainly when I was changing the display of screen ( as i use 2 monitors). The only option i had was to do system restore. But thanks to you.
I’ve been tried to sole this problem for 12hours. Your comment about changing the display of screen helped me a lot!! Thanks!!
Thank you…don’t know why this happened but your instructions helped me fix it. Running Windows 10 and office pro 2007
Great tip! Thanks!
Worked for me, too – thank you!!!
It’s Worked for me, too
thank you very much!
I had a similar issue with Outlook 2013 on Windows 10 and this helped me to fix it. Thank you very much!
Thank you so much. Solved!
Considering you published this in 2012, incredible not been debugged by Microsoft.
Thank you again. M
This problem was faced by only one user logging to TS 2008 r2 using outlook 2010.The issue was resolved.
Thanks.
Great tip. Thank you!!!! If it helps, I had to use the Control Key and the arrow keys at the same time to bring my window back into view. Worked like a charm.
Thank you, this worked !!!!
Man, you are a fucking god. Thanks a lot, what an annoying bug!!
Awesome, this post solved the issue. Many thanks!