Question : Windows Mail on Vista to Outlook 2007 on Windows 7

We've just done a server install for a new customer.  All staff were previously using Outlook 2007 and IMAP connections to their mail server - so transfer of their data to Exchange was not an issue.

However, the boss had MS Office Home and Student edition on his laptop and hence didn't have Outlook and was using Windows Mail.  He was also using Windows Vista Home Edition - and because there's no direct upgrade from Vista Home to Windows 7 Professional (and we could no longer find any Vista Business upgrade licences), I had to do a clean install of 7 Pro.

That being the case, I did a backup of all Windows Mail messages and contacts, then performed the installation of 7 Pro and MS Office 2007 SBE.  I then went to find Windows Mail to import the backed up messages into - but found it's not available in Windows 7, and I need Windows Live Mail.

So I installed Windows Live Mail and imported his Windows Mail messages.  They imported without errors - but instead of having the Inbox with multiple subfolders, we now had a Storage Group with multiple imported folders.  These imported folders are a bit of a mess, with duplicated folders and messages everywhere.

Initially I didn't realise they were such a mess and simply imported them into Outlook 2007 and told him that he would need to move the messages he requires into his Exchange mailbox Inbox.

He's since been on the phone numerous times saying that he can't find all his messages that were previously in subfolders of Windows Mail Inbox.  Even when he does a search on all folders the messages appear to be missing.

So...given that we have a Windows Mail backup of all his messages...what's the most straightforward way of getting these messages into his Exchange Inbox correctly?

Answer : Windows Mail on Vista to Outlook 2007 on Windows 7

Finally solved this after a lot of pain...

The customer had also previously used an external drive that he was using with Memeo Backup.  He had set this up to backup his WIndows Mail emails.  So I tried to restore this backup onto a Vista machine with Windows Mail.  However, although the folder structure was restored - absolutely no messages were restored.

I contacted Memeo about this - they say that if he'd chosen the "SmartPick" file selection then by default Windows Mail emails are NOT included?!?!?   Doesn't sound very "Smart" !

This appeared to be the end of the road, but miraculously, found another backup on his laptop hard disk on the second partition - which was created a week previous to the changeover.  It was created using the Static Windows Mail Backup application.  Not sure who was responsible for this - the user said he didn't know anything about it.

I took a copy of this and successfully restored it to Windows Mail on a Vista machine - all the subfolders and messages were now present.  I then created a new Exchange profile in Outlook on the Vista machine in order to export the messages into his mailbox on the server.  But the result was I ended up with the same mess of storage folders in his mailbox.

Having done more research it certainly seems like there is a major flaw in the import/export functionality of Windows Mail that was fixed in Windows Live Mail.

So...I restored the messages into a clean copy of Windows Mail using the Static Windows Mail Backup program.  Then I upgraded to Windows Live Mail allowing the install process to automatically transfer the old messages - then exported to the Exchange profile in Outlook.

And it worked!

So I guess the moral of that story is don't rely on the import/export mechanism of Windows Mail - upgrade to Windows Live Mail.