Thunderbird

Last Wednesday, January 23, I was helping Melanie Hill, the Student Ministry Assistant, convert her email account and contacts from her old PC to her new, beautiful iMac. I have to say it was quite the adventure.

I started by going onto her iMac and opening Mail (Apple’s email application) to begin the conversion process. Here is where I hit the first bump, an expected bump but nonetheless a bump. Mail will not take files directly from Outlook on Windows.

So my next step was to search for conversion programs that would allow Mail to read Outlook files. I learned that I needed to convert the Outlook files into mbox files. Ok at least I know that. Good Luck finding a program that does not cost money to convert them.

Well I actually found one that worked (on about the sixth or seventh try). It happens that Mozilla, the same company that created FireFox, also makes an email application. And what do you know it’s standard file is saved as an mbox file. Great! I imported the files straight from Outlook. About ten minutes later all the files were in Thunderbird, working great. Then all I had to do was grab the file from the Thunderbird application folder, put it on the iMac and MAJA–KAZAM. It imported everything into Mail, including the folders. 

So if you are a FireFox user and love it, are using a PC, and hate Outlook’s monopoly—give Thunderbird a try.