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Question

Transfer live email files from dead laptop to new laptop

Oct 10, 2013 7:18AM PDT

I can't imagine this is a rare tale to tell, so hopefully someone can help me out with this.

I recently killed my windows 7 laptop. Pulled the hard drive and set it up as an external HD for my new laptop running windows 8. I'd like to pull my old windows live emails and contacts from the old HD and import them into MS Office Outlook. I'm worried that the solution is staring me in the face, cuz I'm pretty bleary-eyed after all the reclamation work I've already done, but I'm just not seeing it. Any guidance?

Thanks.

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Re: email files
Oct 10, 2013 7:25AM PDT
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Yeah, I'm pretty sure I've heard of Google.
Oct 10, 2013 8:02AM PDT

:-P

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Re: google
Oct 10, 2013 8:13PM PDT

The hits in the search I gave tell where to find those files. That's what you wanted, didn't you?

Kees

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Sorry
Oct 10, 2013 9:40PM PDT

Thought you were trying to be a smarta**. Was actually looking for the process of using live email files with office outlook. Found the eml files right away. Struggled to find the contact file (edb), but the big difficulty was how to import raw files into office outlook without having the ability to open the old files in live mail to export into a different format. I found some free converter programs, but haven't found one that will actually work. Figured there MUST be a simple way to do this, since it's all MS products...

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See my answer below.
Oct 10, 2013 10:08PM PDT

Temporarily install Windows Live Mail and export those contacts in a format Outlook will (hopefully) understand to import.

But it might be necessary to just retype everything.

Kees

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Answer
Those files are in this folder
Oct 10, 2013 7:28AM PDT

Look at C:\Users\your ID\Appdata\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail.

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Let me be more clear.
Oct 10, 2013 8:22AM PDT

I'm wanting to manually remove windows 7 live mail emails and contact files from a hard drive and move them onto my windows 8 computer to be used with MS Office Outlook. I'm sure the old *.eml files are easy to drag over, but they're not the important thing here. It's the contacts I need. I cannot find the contact file on the old hard drive. I know it should be called "contacts.edb" and I know it's probably a hidden file. I've clicked the checkbox to see the hidden files, I've looked where the file should be, and I've done a search to see if it was moved somewhere else, and I'm not finding it. Once I do find it, I don't have a clue how to integrate that file into MS Office Outlook.

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For your contacts, they'll be here
Oct 10, 2013 10:34AM PDT

The folder for your contacts is in this folder:
ook at C:\Users\your ID\Appdata\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live.

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A trick that might be useful ...
Oct 10, 2013 8:26PM PDT

first thing in the morning, immediately after login, add a contact. Then search for all files modified today using your favorite file searcher. It must be one of the files that's listed.

The common way to import contacts into a mail-program is to export them in some common format (like .csv) from the old program. It isn't very well standardised, but it's better than the assumption that every e-mail program can import data from every other e-mail program.

So just install Windows Love mail on the new machine, restore or import the files it needs from the original hard disk and export the contacts, so Outlook can pick them up.

Kees