The Quick & Dirty guide to
migrating from Eudora to Outlook
By Chris Dillon 15/09/09. Version 2. Latest version at: www.ucl.ac.uk/is/fiso/ah/courses
1. Prune your e-mail, especially messages with attachments. Make sure you have no
special characters e.g. punctuation in the names of your mailboxes.
2. Compact your mailboxes by going to Special | Compact Mailboxes. Warning: you may
lose mail at this stage if a mailbox is corrupt. If this happens, e-mail helpdesk@ucl.ac.uk
and ask them to restore the mailbox.
3. Make sure you have enough quota to make a copy of all your mailboxes and
attachments by going to Start | Programs | Software P-R | Quota Usage. You should
have twice the quota you are presently using on Central Email Unix Quota (or R: drive). A
quick way of deleting unneeded attachments is to go to R:\dos\eudora\attach (or
N:\rdrive\ dos\eudora\attach) in Windows Explorer and to delete them there. No mailbox
should be larger than 30Mb. Check in R:\dos\eudora or N:\rdive\dos\eudora.
4. Switching Eudora to IMAP
a. In Eudora go to Tools | Options | Checking Mail. Change pop-server.ucl.ac.uk to:
imap-server.ucl.ac.uk
b. Go to Tools | Options | Incoming Mail. Change Server configuration from POP
to IMAP.
c. Click the radio button next to When I delete a message: Move it to: Trash
5. Using the tool to convert Eudora mail to the standard format
a. Open Windows Explorer.
b. Run Start | Programs | Utilities | Map Central Email-Unix Filestore (unless your
R: drive does not have a red cross on it – this would indicate that you are not yet
using the new institutional filestore).
c. Double-click on P:\bin\eudora\convert.exe.
d. Choose to save the files to N: (or some other drive to which you have access and
which has enough space for a copy of all your .mbx files).
e. Copy the files to T:\imap-mail (unless your R: drive does not have a red cross on it,
in which case copy them to R:\imap-mail).
6. Start Outlook.
7. Check that your mail is all visible on the IMAP server (under [your user id]@ucl.ac.uk). If
it isn’t right-click IMAP in the left pane and select Update Folder List.
8. To import your Eudora address book, you need to use Thunderbird:
a. Start Thunderbird (with Option 1, if asked). Do NOT use Option 2.
b. Switch off Tools | Account Settings | Server Settings | Advanced | Server
supports folders that contain sub-folders and messages.
c. Go to Tools | Import | Address Books and select Eudora.
d. Go to Tools | Export in the Thunderbird Address Book and choose Comma
Separated in the Save as type drop-down box.
e. 4. In Outlook go to File | Import and Export | Import from another program or
file, select Comma Separated Values (Windows) and select the CSV file.