Cyber Militia

I normally use Outlook Express for my email.
And I was only playing around with Thunderbird the other day, when I accidentally hit “Get Messages” without first configuring Thunderbird to “Leave mail on the server” …
So here I was, with Thunderbird holding hostage the mail that belongs in my Outlook Express.
Thus began my little research to accomplish some sort of working synchronization between the two email clients.
Thunderbird does have a nice little “Import from Outlook Express” feature builtin, but, as far as I know, there’s no direct way of importing mail from Thunderbird into Outlook Express (Outlook express 6 was out much before Thunderbird, so no surprises there).

From what I know of these two applications, I can think of the following (not thoroughly tested) ways of synchronizing your mailboxes in Thunderbird and Outlook Express :

Outlook Express to Thunderbird
If you have Outlook express and Thunderbird on different machines – Copy the Outlook Express mailbox files to the machine with Thunderbird at the corresponding path.

These files are located at – C:\Documents and Settings\<yourprofilename>\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{some-random-16-char-guid-here}\Microsoft\Outlook Express\

Now from within Thunderbird » Import » Mail » Outlook Express.

You may have to create an identical folder structure in the Outlook express of the machine that runs Thudnerbird.

Thunderbird to Outlook Express

Download and install SmartSave Thunderbird Extension – an extension that lets you export multiple mails in one go.

Right Click » Export (the folders/messages that you want to sync into Outlook express).

A bunch of .eml files will be created.
If you have Outlook express and Thunderbird on different machines, copy these files to the machine with Outlook Express.

Select all and drag these files into the corresponding folder inside Outlook express.

That is, the files from Thunderbird’s inbox into Outlook Express’ inbox; those from Thunderbird’s sentbox into Outlook Express’ sentbox and so on. (There’s no compulsion, but it doesn’t make much sense otherwise …)

If you find that the above doesn’t work for you or know of a better way of doing the same – let me know (you know where to leave a message)