Microsoft may have finally convinced me...

[jsowers]

I'm ready to toss in the towel. Been converting from an older to a newer computer the last few days. Both are running Microsoft XP and I have always used IE as a browser and Outlook (not Outlook Express) for email.

Several years ago I used the MS File Tranfer Wizard to move eevrything from old to new computer and I was amazed at how smooth it all went. So fast forward to "now"  with me doing it again and I have had absolutely nothing but trouble making it work. After hours and hours i am slowly getting things working again on the newer computer but I have tried three times to move my email this way and everythime I try it I get a different result. And none of the results have moved the email that I've moved from In Box to individual file folders to keep for the time being. I am amazed tat something that worked so slick last time is such a PITA this time around.

Terry,

No need to throw in the towel. I work in an IT department of a school system and I do this for a living. What I do is export from the old computer's Outlook and import to the new one. You didn't say which version of Outlook you have. In 2003 you select File-->Import and Export and choose Export to a file. Then choose personal folder file (.pst). Click Personal Folders at the top of the next screen and be sure to check the box next to "Include subfolders." Browse to the desktop and save it as backup.pst. If you have another item like archived email under Personal Folders, you will have to export that separately and name it archive.pst.

Then copy all your backups to the desktop on the new computer. Don't just leave them on a flash drive. Assuming it's also Outlook 2003, you choose Import and Export and then Import from another program or file. Scroll down to Personal Folder File (.pst) and choose that. Browse to your pst file on the desktop and click Open. Don't change the settings for duplicates, etc and it should import all your email and folders. You may have some duplicates in your inbox, but you can delete those.

In Outlook 2010, you go to File-->Open and choose Import to import and export. The rest is like the above instructions.

Good luck!

Outlook is OK, but be sure to do your Windows updates. I've seen Outlook 2010 SP1 fix all kinds of unusual things.

[AE_Collector]

Hi Jonathan:

Thanks for helping out. In a nut shell what you are saying is what I was doing. The biggest problem is that I have a whole bunch of individual file folders under Personal Folders and they don't want to move. I keep thinking that maybe they have moved but are hiding somewhere that I can't see but so far no luck finding them.

It is Office 2010. Same copy put onto the new computer as I had recently upgraded the old comuter to 2010. I wondered what MS would do about that so I haven't registered Office on the new computer yet until the old one is retired.

Tonight I will loook at it some more and see if I can find something in your instructions that I have missed and will report back. I do know that I was leaving it on the USB drive rather than copying to the desktop.

Thanks again,

Terry

[jsowers]

Tonight I will look at it some more and see if I can find something in your instructions that I have missed and will report back. I do know that I was leaving it on the USB drive rather than copying to desktop.

Sometimes it won't import well or at all from a USB drive, or so I am told. I always copy it to the computer's hard drive. Some of our employees have tons and tons of email and it imports faster that way.

[AE_Collector]

Okay, some progress with MS Office Outlook here. I redid the import of emails by copying from the USB drive onto the new computerd desktop and then doing the import. Either that did the trick or maybe as I was suspicious of, the personal file folders were hiding. After redoing it I happened to notice little tiny arrow outlines pointing at "Inbox". When I clicked on this arrow all the personal folders dropped down. So that is cured one way or the other. Thanks for the help there Jonathan...progress is being made.

I am still trying to figure out all the confusion in the left hand "navigation Pane" I have folders everywhere. Up top is a "Favorites" section with an Inbox, Sent Items Deleted items, a second Inbox with my email address written after it.

Then the next section down has "Outlook Data File" as a title and more Inboxes, Deleted Items and Sent Items folders. Also Drafts, Sent Items, Junk, RSS Feeds & Search Folders.

Then a third section below titled as my email address with more Inboxes, Deleted Items, Sent Items, Calendar, Contacts, Junk email, trash, outbox, search folders and sent mail.

On the old computer running this exact same MS Outlook 2010 it seems to me they had put Inbox, Drafts, Sent items & Deleted Items up top. The next section was all my personal folders and at the very bottom was Archived items and that was it.

With this new set up I keep finding the same new email in different inboxes that I have already read and filed once.

Does anyone kniow what is going on and how I can get rid of all these duplicated files? The email looks to be pretty much the same in all of them. I do see references to creating additional accounts in here so maybe that is what is inadvertently going on but I want it SIMPLE! I see where to add accounts but no mention of deleting any accounts.

I did notice that if I right click on the third sections title which is my email address, there is a "remove" option there but I am hesitant to pull the trigger on that yet.

Stumped in Vancouver...

Terry

[wds]

Very interesting thread.  I recently purchased a Macbook Pro, after reading and hearing all the hype about Apple products.  I won't go into any comparison between Apple and Windows, but for business use I definitely prefer Windows.  I ended up running dual operating systems, with all my real business applications on the windows side.  As far as the Safari, I had a lot of trouble with it, and ended up having to stop using it.  I would like to say that I really liked Safari, but it kept bogging my laptop down, to the point of locking the computer.  I started watching my memory usage through the Activity Monitor, and noticed that as the day went on, the memory usage increased until it was all gone.  Thinking that I didn't have enough memory, I purchased more to increase RAM to 8 gb.  The increased memory didn't help at all.  Once I stopped using Safari the problem stopped.  Even early in the day, before the memory had all been taken, the computer was sluggish - but since switching to Firefox, all those problems have disappeared.  It was nice to read on this thread that my problem is not an isolated one - and of course Apple won't admit to any problems with their software.  

[GG]

Actually the Safari bog-down problem is mostly due to Adobe Flash.  If you turn off Flash (Safari >> Preferences >> Security tab >> un-check "enable plug-ins") or use a selective Flash-blocking utility, that will help.  Turning off Java and Java script and blocking pop-up windows will also help.

IMHO Flash is an obnoxious thing that Adobe foisted on the world without informed consent.  It is a known memory hog.  One of these days I'll do a comparative test of opening webpages like crazy in both Safari and MSIE, to see which bogs down worst of all, but I suspect that if I pounded on IE the way I pound on Safari, it would also bog down and eventually lock up the machine.

This is why Steve Jobs went to war against Flash in his mobile devices, and insisted on only supporting HTML-5. 

Each operating system does some things better than the other.  I do email, web, and note-taking, on the Mac side; and PBX & voicemail system programming (and probably soon bookkeeping also) on the Windows side, and have never had a fatal problem with either.  I've typically felt more comfortable pushing Mac to its limits in terms of things open on the desktop, because I know how Mac behaves with an overload better than I know how Windows behaves with an overload.  But Win7 shows every good sign of being able to be pushed that hard without problems, so chances are I'll be doing just that in short order.

[jsowers]

Terry, aka Stumped in Vancouver, I would delete it all and start over. I think you've imported your email numerous times without replacing duplicates and now you've finally found it all. Unless there are emails that you only have one copy of, I'd delete your account and start over. I don't have Office 2010 handy at home to tell how that's done, unfortunately. You have your backup still on the desktop, so starting over is much easier than sifting through all the duplicates.

Like GG, I also use a Mac sometimes, and the school system where I work is about half Mac. At work we've been hit by email viruses that attack PCs on occasion, but not in a while, thank goodness. During those dark virus days, it was reassuring that I did my email on my old, trusty Mac with MS Entourage and I could open the virus emails to see their payload and links back to infected sites without fear of infection. I have an older Mac laptop at home too, but I confess it's not used much, except as a sturdy base for my XP laptop to sit on. I also use it for downloading pictures and that's about it. I'm not crazy about its trackpad.

[Greg G.]

The verdict is still out on GC.  It's sleek and it's fast, but the lack of a print preview is a major drawback because I often print out pages from various things online.  The print dialog box still has the option of which pages you want to print, but w/o knowing which one I really want, it's a shot in the dark.  It isn't always just the first page.

Verdict is in, I switched.  The print preview that I was concerned about just appears at a different point along with the print options after you select print.

Slightly modifying this.  The print function in GC isn't as good as IE, but there is an add-on to GC to bring a page that you want to print up in an IE based tab.  Example is an ad in Craigslist that has 4 pictures will print in two pages in GC, but IE will print it in one.  Also IE will "shrink to fit" one if need be.  But I'm still sticking with GC.