Transferring Your Outlook and Quickbooks Data to Mac OS X?

rollthelosindice asks: "I recently picked up the new 1GHZ eMac with Superdrive with the intentions of it being purely a video editing machine, but of course I changed my mind once I started using it, and wanted to import my email over from Outlook and my business accounting over from Quickbooks, however Apple's Mail can't import form Outlook, only Outlook Express. The same goes for Quickbooks, where they can only migrate over Quicken. I've tried all sorts of importing and exporting to/from different file formats (CSV, etc) to try and make it work, but there seems to be no solution other than running both machines right next to one another. I even tried VNC for a few days, but that got frustrating. Has anyone come up with a successful work around for these importing short falls? I'm sure there are others like me in this or a similar situation."

Comments

I was gonna try this...

[svenjob]

I was going to load up Outlook Express and use that to convert everything to OE format and then use my new Mac to then transfer it all over. Seems kind of overly complicated, but whatever works! Note: I have't tried it yet, but I can't see it not working.

Use Eudora

[2nd Post!]

I've been suggesting this for years, and have done it several times myself.

Export from Outlook/Outlook Express into Eudora, and from Eudora into Mail.

I used Eudora for a looong time exactly because it was cross compatible across platforms and versions. My mailboxes from 1996 are still readable in Eudora in 2003 :)

But Mail is just too darned convenient, so I switched last year; same with Mozilla/Safari.

Re:Use Eudora

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried to use and like Mail but I had so many problems like pitiful feedback when the mail server is having a problem. It took me days the first time to be sure that there was server problem. Recently it was eating outgoing messages and not reporting problems. Some times it gives bogus password errors. Configuring for more than one account can be confusing if you use different outgoing mail servers. Did I mention that it's unbearably slow when you have a lot of incomming mail ?

Use Eudora or PowerMail instead. There is noting worse that not knowing if your messages are being delivered or not.

Re:Use Eudora

[MoCycleGeek]

First, on the original topic. I agree with the Eudora conversion suggestion, It's worked for me in the past.

Now: I'm not sure where you are getting unbearably slow. I just converted my local mail files on a NetBSD server to IMAP (1gig of mail, 180k+ messages of list traffic and such).

Sure it took about 20 hours to sync the first time (I have Mail caching all of my mail and attachments to the local disk so I can get at them offline) but once that task was over I find mail to be quite responsive. Esp when I need to resync the tree (yes, even with new mail - not just the old cached ones).

I'm using it with a 800G3 iBook.

-Sean

Try Outlook2Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

For the Outlook side of your problem you might want to consider Outlook2Mac by Little Machines. I used this app to successfully get my cousin to switch over... The time is saved me was well worth the $10.

Re:Try Outlook2Mac

[Ivan Karamazov]

I successfully migrated over two gigs of mail from Outlook PST files to Mail.app using Outlook2Mac. I also converted a lot of contacts. It's a great tool--reliable and accurate. Converts attachments and everything. Only problem, it runs in Windows.

Utility that works on Linux

[sunya]

Try libdbx from :
libdbx on freshmeat. It includes a utilty that will convert from Outlook to mbox. Then import it in your mac... works fine for me...

Use Mozilla for your Outlook mail

[rgrimm]

Import your mail from Outlook into Mozilla for Windows. Mozilla stores all email in the mbox format, which is easily imported into Apple Mail. You obviously still need to transfer the files to your Mac, but that should be easy. Look for the mbox files in C:\Documents and Settings\user\Application Data\Mozilla\Profiles\default\some weird string\Mail.

If you want to spend money, try Outlook2Mac (http://www.littlemachines.com/).

Re:Use Mozilla for your Outlook mail

[Bob Wehadababyitsabo]

I can vouch for Little Machines. I have over 30,000 pieces of mail in my Inbox alone, and Outlook2Mac worked almost flawlessly.

You can also try this hint, but I couldn't get it to work.

To the previous poster suggesting libdbx: it converts Outlook Exprees data files, not Outlook .pst files. For conversion of .pst files to mbox, you'll nedd libPST. Only problem is, the released version of libPST doesn't support little endian machines w/o a code rewrite. The maintainer did release an OS X friendly version (0.4) but M$ threatened with a cease and desist letter.

Hope some of my blabbing has helped...

Bob

Intuit's Mac OS X support is terrible

[__aaevmb228]

I switched last year, and moving from Quicken '99 on Windows to Quicken '03 on OS X was the most painful part of the process.

Now given, you asked about Quickbooks, not Quicken, but based on my experience, you'll have to jump through some hoops to get there. I had to export my Quicken data to QIF, in the process losing my loans, memorized transactions, scheduled transactions and some other minor stuff. Then I imported this file into Quicken Mac and had to go back and fix everything.

QIF isn't Quicken's native file format. It's simply for transactions. One would think that after a decade of Quicken, Intuit's Windows and Mac engineering teams would share as much code as possible, but it just doesn't seem that way to me.

Quicken Mac '03 itself is an awful product. It lags the Windows '99 product feature-wise, lacks polish and has many bugs. Most of them are of the irritating UI variety, but I've had it crash on me several times and it can't seem to keep track of my home loan without getting the balance out of whack.

Unfortunately, momentum is keeping me with Quicken for now. I'm hoping that '04 is a big step forward. Otherwise I may look at switching to something else, like Moneydance.

same problem

[minus_273]

I had the same problem the other day .. just got my girld friend to switch to an ibook and also got a old G3 myself :)
we both used outlook. The way i got her mail over to eonturage was by copying it to imap folders.
now theonly problem is how to get the calendar data and contacts (using csv was a pain)
also anyone know a good way to sync a pocket pc :-p pocket mac isnt too good (and costs $$$) and synce isnt done yet. Sigh i guess it is missing sync then

Quickbooks made a tool

[jjarrard]

http://www.quickbooks.com/support/index/win2mac/ma nual_download.html

Re:Quickbooks made a tool

[jeeves99]

broken link... Fixed.

Use IMAP and .Mac

[gjh]

Try this...

• Make sure the mail that you want is in a personal mail file (.pst) on Outlook.
• Reconfigure your outlook client to use 'Internet Mail' - this is a complete mode change and will enable IMAP and disable exchange support.
• Configure imap. The server you want is probably your .Mac account on imap on mail.mac.com
• Drag all your folders to the IMAP server
• Fire up your preferred Mac mailer and either just use the mail in IMAP or drag it to a local folder heirarchy.

It is of course a piece of lame commercialism that make M$ choose to make Exchange and IMAP connectivity mutually exclusive in Outlook.

Regards... Greg

For mail transfer, IMAP

[babbage]

From everything I've read, it seems like the canonical best way to transfer a collection of mail folders from one application to another application is almost to try using IMAP for the translation: have your source application (Outlook in this case) export all it's messages to the IMAP server, then use your new mail application (Mail.app here) to import messages back from the server. Ideally, you could even leave the messages on the server, so switching from one mail client to another becomes as trivial as switching web browsers for accessing the same sites.

If your ISP or job *ahem* doesn't provide you with access to an IMAP server, then you can use Fink to install a copy of UW-IMAPD, and just run that on localhost or somewhere on your home network -- sudo fink -y install uw-imapd

If you had other questions, I'm sure some sysadmin at work *ahem* would be willing to answer any questions... :-)

Use Emailchemy and QuickBooks!

[jdawg]

There's a nifty lil' shareware Java app out there called Emailchemy that's practically a Rosetta-stone of email data. It's not free, but it works quite well [and is cross platform].

http://www.weirdkid.com/products/emailchemy/

For QuickBooks data, why not just use QuickBooks? There is a Mac OS X native version.

http://www.intuit.com

I did it - scripts folder

[bassmastergeneral]

Oh - man, after about 6 months out of being telephone support for apple I am forgetting everything... but, I do remember this little script inside the scripts folder (you mighs search for scripts in the nifty finder) there is a applescript that will parse through your outlook address book and perhaps (memory fails me) it does the mail too? Again, its been a while.. but you should have some luck looking into that script, maybe you can edit the script to do what you want it to do? Hope that helps... maybe applecare support can help you, but they will probably tell you to go FYS, but then again I helped someone do it once. I am pretty sure this was 10.2/jaguar only thingy...

You're all over complicating it. Ya Geeks!

[Anonymous Coward]

Convert your email account to IMAP vs POP3. That way all the content sits on the server. Then access the account from Mail. All will be downloaded to the Mac. Convert back to POP3.

As far as contacts, drag them out of outlook into a folder. This will create VCF files. They can be burned to CD and dragged right into Address Book on the Mac. Do not try to Export the contacts because this will create one large text file only readable by M$ clients. You want a bunch of little VCF cards, instead.

Very simple solution that you would have found out in a heartbeat had you called Tech support or even browsed he K base @ Apple.com

Done