How to Export Thunderbird Data (MBOX) into Outlook PST
Nowadays, Thunderbird is an open source application used to store all personal information, such as e-mail, messages, address books and configuration settings of a user. It is one of the most widely used e-mail clients readily available in the market and the e-mail items are stored in the form of MBOX format. MBOX format is also supported by several Mac email clients like Entourage, and Apple Mail.
In Thunderbird, all e-mail items and messages are stored in a directory outside of the user’s program directory. Thunderbird is not the only e-mail client that is used by people, there are also many other e-mail clients, such as MS Outlook.
According to the users, MS Outlook is the most widely used e-mail client and it stores e-mail and messages in the form of PST format. Due to Outlook’s sturdy and robust topographies, Thunderbird lags a little behind in terms of usage. Because of this, users prefer switching from Thunderbird to Outlook PST, although the MBOX format is globally-accessible file format.
Moving from MBOX to PST requires huge data and there might be an issue while e-mail client switching. Although being a free and an open source application, Thunderbird lacks functionalities that are in Outlook.
Reasons of switching over Outlook to Thunderbird:
- Thunderbird lacks absence of cross-program functionality with Microsoft Office products unlike Outlook
- No task and scheduling software
- No calendar integration
- Lacking of Grouping contacts
- Option to view message threads is a long setup
- No full preview of the messages, users has to click through each individual message
- No IMAP support
Although Thunderbird widely supports many platforms like Windows 7, Windows 8, 10, Vista, Windows XP, Mac OS X and Linux, but these reasons stated above enforce the people to switch from Thunderbird to Outlook.
While exporting MBOX to PST, first and foremost, the user should go for a way that can be operated without using software. This way is known as manual method to export .MBOX to .PST files format.
Manual Method:
Step1: Run Thunderbird Email client.
Step2: Open the folder that you want to export.
Step3: For selecting individual e-mail, press and hold “Ctrl” and for choosing all messages, press “ Ctrl + A”.
Step4: Right-click on the selected emails & click “Save As” option.
Step5: Save the selected messages in the destination folder where you want and click ‘Select Folder’ to export messages.
Step6: Now, run MS Outlook.
Step7: Right-click the ‘”Outlook” folder & click on “ New Folder”.
Step8: In the “Name” section, enter a desired name for new folder and click “OK” button to create it. (The new folder will be empty)
Step9: Choose all emails exported from Thunderbird using Ctrl + A
Step10: Select and drag all emails to the middle pane of the MS Outlook and import all messages into new folder.
Step11: All emails will be viewed after successful import process.
This manual method will be useful in the situation when there are limited emails. For bulk data migration, this can be a bit bad and thus, for many this is not an apt solution.
Why manual method isn’t your best bet?
- Time consuming (dragging and dropping of each email)
- Broken images: The graphics will be shown as broken images after migration
- Emails will lose their original email SMTP header
- No assurance of each and every migration of email
- Risk of data loss
To overcome these critical issues, it is always advisable to use third party tool that can effectively deliver powerful and efficient data transfer services. Thus, there are professional MBOX to PST converter utilities to switch from Thunderbird email client to MS Outlook.
What to choose as third party tool?
MBOX to PST Converter is a popular MBOX converter tool that can convert MBOX email files to PST file format. The tool allows you to save your converted emails to any desired location and in multiple formats like Office 365, RTF, PDF & HTML. Apart from converting Thunderbird mailbox to Outlook PST, this tool has an option to convert multiple email clients to PST format, such as Entourage, AppleMail, Eudora, Spicebird and Pocomail.