08-08-2011, 09:03 AM

Both my kids run macs and have been 'banging' on at me for years to switch from my PC.

So I finally did it and bought a Mac and am trying to transfer many years of accumulated files from the PC to the MAC.

The photos and documents were pretty straightforward, I followed the advice elsewhere on this forum and connected the two machines together with an ethernet cable and 'share' folders. The problem is the mail set up.

I have a lot of personal data stored in local folders on windows mail.

Also, because my employer is in the process of going through an major IT system upgrade we are all being moved to MS Office 2010 and as part of that process we all get access to the MS Home User Programme which means we can buy a full Office Professional 2010 (or Office for MAC 2011) licence for £9.00, an offer that is too good to turn down. I therefore have Outlook for Mac on the Imac and will be using that as my email system

I couldn't find an easy way to export from Windows mail to Outlook - the file headers were being corrupted.

I did however have an old (2001) MS Office disc for Windows XP. It has stability problems running in Vista which is why I stopped using it when I acquired the Vista machine and switched to Windows Mail but I have re-installed the Outlook package from that disc and it sort of runs (but was still a bit unstable). I then imported into Outlook 2001 all of the files from Windows Mail - not a problem

I then transferred the resultant Outlook.PST file to the MAC and tried importing it into Outlook MAC 2011. A dialogue box popped up telling me that pre 2003 Outlook used an ANSI format that is not compatible with Outlook for MAC 2011.

So I downloaded a free trial version of Office 2010 from MS and installed it on the PC. Once again, I transferred the OUTLOOK.PST file to the Mac and tried to import it to Outlook for Mac 2011. And I got the same message telling me in was in ANSI format.

Sorry it took so long to tell the story but does anyone out there know how to get my files from Outlook 2010 running on a PC to Outlook 2011 running on a Mac? Is there some special conversion process that I have to carry out with Windows Outlook 2010 so that it converts my data to the correct format?

Any help appreciated.

Rgds Ian

08-08-2011, 10:12 AM

From what I've read, the trick is once Office 2010 is installed on the PC, export the data as a PST again. You should get a PST that is now able to import into Office 2011 for Mac.

08-08-2011, 12:10 PM

I gave up on trying to transfer anything from Windows Mail and copied the mail I wanted into Docs on Windows then transferred that way via memory stick to Docs on the Mac. This may not be the way an experienced Mac user would suggest but it worked for a first timer like me.

08-09-2011, 04:16 AM

Go to this site Little Machines. It has a program specifically for moving all your mail including folders to Macs.

08-09-2011, 10:19 AM

I was going to suggest O2M, but the software still won't work properly with older PSTs, i.e., the ANSI encoded files. They still require exporting in a newer version of Office to transfer properly with O2M.

08-09-2011, 03:01 PM

Cracked it thanks guys.

EvenStranger was right, I had to export the file from Outlook 2010 rather than just copy the Outlook.PST across.

Once I exported the data to a file called Backup.PST and copied that file across to the MAC, Outlook 2011 running on the Mac was able to import it.

Many thanks to all who replied.

Rgds Ian

11-21-2011, 02:46 PM

I had a major computer crash on my Dell PC. managed to extract the .pst files from Outlook to a folder which I have now loaded on to my Imac.

How do I get the .pst files to transfer data into Mac Mail? I have been trying to Download O2M but it doesn't download properly.

Has any one got any ideas? If you have and it works I will be eternally grateful!

Peter S

12-14-2011, 10:52 PM

Sorry for the late posting but if you can borrow a PC, install a free trial copy of Office and load your existing .pst file to it and then you can transfer from there to your Mac.

Please note, if your old version of Office was pre- 2003 then the Mac convertor can't do anything with it, you need to convert it to the latest version of Office first.

Rgds Ian

12-15-2011, 05:55 PM

Hi Ian

Thank you for your reply. What I did was to buy a cheap version of a Microsoft package which included Outlook/Word/Xcel etc which is Mac compatible and installed it onto my Mac. The new Outlook was then able to import the .pst files and all were then readable. Problem solved!
Again thanks for your help.Peter S