Review by switcher

I had about 2GB of Outlook 2007 files that I wanted to get into Entourage 2008 on a Mac. Over the past 2 days, I have tried and looked at different solutions. Here is my summary:

1) Mail2Mac $15 – purchased it, it spent about 5 hours converting and writing lots of files, crashed when I tried to run the Mac component which was supposed to import. At any rate, it does not give any options on which outlook files to export, and it imports into MacMail before importing into Entourage, so I would not recommend it.

2) Outlook2Mac $10 - heard mixed reviews about it, decided to skip it

3) EmailChemy - $30 - heard good things about it. It is a Java based program, BUT it has no option of importing Calendar or Contacts.

4) MessageSave - $30 (remember to look for the Mac discount, else its $40). This is what I ended up using. Very fast, has all the right options. Exported my mail folders (automatically put folder names, etc.) into MBOX, could select which folders to export, exported all calendar into single ICS and all contacts into single VCF. Just dragged the created files into Entourage and it imported it. Took about 1 hour to export all my 2GB of outlook PST files into MBOX. Highly recommended.

I am still wondering why I needed to move from a Windows machine to a Mac when I had all the software on the Windows machine already, but that is a different subject. Hope this helps your users. I nearly sold my new MacBook on eBay because it was so frustrating to find the correct program that works.

-vikas Aggarwal

Review by switcher - 2

SURVEY OF CONVERTING OUTLOOK 2007 TO ENTOURAGE 2008

"Executive summary"

If you have a big complicated .PST file and you don't want to lose anything, it's going to be a time-consuming process. If you have a simpler file and/or want to keep it cheaper and faster, Outlook2Mac is the best option (you will lose some Contact data). If you want to be exhaustive and not lose anything and are prepared to pay more and spend more time, use the Exchange route.

I spent major parts of the past month trying out all the different options to convert my 2GB "15 years worth of data " Outlook 2007 .PST file to Entourage 2008.

Here are my preliminary results :

I tried the free Thunderbird and Eudora routes but it didn't keep attachments of emails.

I started trying the route using "Outlook 2001 for Mac" because I trusted Microsoft to do the best job (how wrong). It was hard finding an old PowerPC mac but I finally did.

All my HMTL messages were converted to text; The "received date" field of ALL emails was converted to the date when I did the conversion. All flags for emails were lost. But it did keep attachments to emails , and kept the whole hierarchy of folders/subfolders (not the case for other routes to conversion !).
I did a good job with contacts (although it might have lost the lists). in Calendar it lost the reminders of all calendar items and also the modified occurences of Recurring items.

I tried 3rd party applications mentioned on this site. You better first use the trial versions on these because they didn't work for me:

• Convert My Email $15 : different tests, different results. not a good sign. Doesn't keep folder hierarchy. Contact data was changed (Home Address became Work)
• MessageSave $30 : same things. No folder hierarchy kept ; field "Other" became "Home Address"
• Outlook2Mac $10 : somewhat better job on emails ; lost in conversion all "Other Address" and "Other Phone" fields. Notes were lost.
• Mail2Mac $20: no trial version so I didn't use it.
• Paul Berkowitz's Export-Import Scripts $20 : didn't try them, too McGeeky for my level.

With all those solutions that I tried, you will have some Contact data that comes out different after the conversion, or gets lost. Fields will have switched to another field, or get lost altogether (e.g. no "Assistant" phone number ; "Other" becomes "Home 2"; and many more)

• Emailchemy $30 : best results; but email only.
• Conversion of Contacts using iPod Touch sync with iTunes: lost contacts fields (radio, assistant, callback, company, ISDN, other fax, telex, TTY); email 1 became "work" ; 2 became "Home" ; 3 became "Other"; lost IM address ; office, profession, manager, assistant's names, spouse.
• MobileMe : didn't try it (free trial)

Unsatisfied with all those, I then tried the Exchange route. I got a friend to set me up on his company's server. If not, you can try out a Microsoft Exchange account with MS (minimum 5 seats so I think $50 total).

I had to call Microsoft to set it up properly because even their Help pages mentioned the wrong information. But they were professional on the phone, even though I had to call them back the next day to get a guy who helped me set up the right server address (I had to use the address for Iphones ! even though I was using Entourage)

Even then things weren't working right (lost fields like Profession, nickname, spouse, title, birthdays and anniversaries, suffix); emails became "other".

Things finally cleared up when I switched to Snow Leopard and used the Mail, Address Book and iCal clients (they are specifically designed for Exchange support).

I still have to test whether it did transfer all my data though. It did lose the email lists from Outlook. Also at least some reminders on recurring items.

My total number of Contacts decreased from 1418 to 1339 (but there were quite a few duplicates due to Outlook bugs) so maybe it cleared that issue finally.

This was my journey. It took a month but ended well (thanks to the fortuitously timely Snow Leopard update !), and I hope this can help you save time.

iska rabeendran

If you have questions or comments, you can add them on the Entourage Help Blog topic Importing from Outlook for Windows based PST to Entourage