Interguru's Microsoft Internet Mail Address Conversion to other Mailers

This page will tell you how to convert Microsoft Internet Mail mail address files to other files

There are programs which will convert many Microsoft formats on you own computer. You find them at Maibox Conversion, Other Utilities, and Links to Other Useful Sites .

Alternative method from MSIE to Netscape Communicator and other formats
Pab (.pab) to Ascii
From WAB (.wab)

Note: Read all instructions before doing anything.

Netscape 4.5

You can import Outlook Express and Outlook directly by Opening the Address Book (Communicator Menu: Address Book). Then File Menu : Import, choose the format and proceed.

Instructions for MSIE 4/Outlook,Exchange

From Outlook or Exchange

You must download MSIE 4 to do this. Open it and go to mail, and then under the Tools Menu, addressbook. Under the addressbook's tools menu, go to import. Import the file and proceed as shown below. Sue Mosher runs a very good information service on Outlook and Exchange at www.slipstick.com . You might check it out. As of August 15th, 1998 it had a great deal of information on converting to these, but very little on converting from. This is not her fault. To nobody's surprise, Microsoft makes it very easy to convert to its products, and difficult to convert from them.

From MSIE 4 and beyond (Outlook Express) directly

Go to mail, and then under the Tools Menu, addressbook. Under the addressbook's tools menu, go to export. Export the file as a csv file. with e-mail address and name. You might want to export nicknames -- I don't know how well that will work. In any case, import the csv file into a spreadsheet, manipulate the columns to get the proper order for importing into tab-ascii as directed on the appropriate tab-ascii conversion page. ( Netscape , Ldif , Pegasus , Other text formats , Eudora , Pine , Elm ). Then convert from tab-ascii to whatever you want.

Translating from WAB files

To translate from WAB to Outlook (note: NOT Outlook express, which is a totally different animal), check out WabOut by Jim Beveridge. Unlike most bloated software out there, this is only about 100k to download. WabOut will handle all data fields, not just the name and address. It will also convert distribution lists. Also check out IMN User Tips.

Instructions for MSIE 1-3

First convert your addresses to the format of a text file, one address to a line. The following instructions are from IMN User Tips.

First, make sure that under Mail | Options | Send, the checkbox for "Send Messages Immediately" is unchecked. Second, compose a new message and use the address book to address it to everyone on your list. Give it a random subject and leave the body blank. Third, press the send button (it will not be sent, but placed in the out box). Fourth, go to the out box, select your message and press the "Forward" button. A new message will appear with all of your email names and addresses in alphabetical order. You can copy this and paste it into your word processor, or send the message to yourself and print it. Finally, don't forget to delete the messag in your Outbox that you have addressed to everyone or you will send them all a blank message.

Next go back and use this file as in input to tab-ascii/database conversion.

Alternative methods from MSIE to Netscape Communicator

I received this note from Jean-Pierre Beauchamp

Hi,

I  thought  you might want to share with other users a way of converting
Microsoft Internet Mail Address book to communicator address book
format. Here's how

1) Go to Microsoft Internet Mail and select new message. Click on the
field "TO" :

2) From there, create a list or group combining all of your address book
in it.
(to do so, select all and then click "ADD")

3) Leave the body of the message empty and send the message to the group
and to yourself (this is very important). Read important notice below.

4) Open communicator and click on receive mail. Once the message is in
your inbox, click in the message windows pane with your right mouse
button. Choose "add to address book" and select "ALL".

5) You will be prompted for each entry to the address book. Voila! it's
done

Important : In order for his work all address book In Microsoft Internet
Mail must be valid (ie. Each entry  must contains at least one e-mail
address and your mail server must be able to send your message to ALL
e-mail address in the group). If one address fail, the process won't
work so check first that all entry are correct.

Before doing this you might want to ensure that all recepients don't
mind receiving this fake message.

Jean-Pierre Beauchamp, Computer consultant
Montreal Quebec Canada
Voice : 514-990-7064
E-mail : decath@cam.org

Another Method

From Eric Marceau
A real easy way is just to open outlook express new message, open addressbook and just drag e-mail addresses into text area which creats e-mail links then send it to yourself and retrieve with netscape mail. Then just use "Add to address book" beside e-mail names. This way you don't have to send e-mail to everyone in address book as stated above.

.pab to ascii (which can be translated to anything else)

I received this note from Bill Parducci on Aug.,6,1997.

If your are interested. . .

I wrote a quick and dirty util for pulling out names & addresses from exchange's pab and creating an ascii text file with an [optional] notes COL file (for importing into notes address book). it only allows you to move over the name and e-mail address (no phone numbers, etc), but it is pretty stable and it is free to anyone who wants it.

It requires that you have the exchange/windows mail client installed on the pc. When you run the app, it fires open the address book, you select the names you want to covert (by adding them to the 'To' field) and tell the app where you want to save the output files. it will create up to 3 output files (smtp, msmail & other).

If you have notes, you open the personal address book, do a file import, select the output file and tell it to use the COL file generated. ba-da-bing.

update from Bill Parducci on Feb. 6,1998.
PABascii has been rewritten to be include extracting functions to pull ALL e-mail information out of schedule plus, and can write to netscape readable html files. it is still free, but i would appreciate a note telling me that you are using it and how it worked.
Here it is: http://www.parducci.net/downloads/ (self extracting)

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