How to migrate from Outlook 2010 to Evolution email?

Software & Web Applications
#1

Perhaps someone else has achieved this?

I have a need to migrate away from Outlook 2010 (on windows 7) to a Linux based email client, Evolution looks the best for my needs. In theory I ought to be able to export from outlook to Thunderbird (on windows 7) then export to Evolution on Linux. However, I have tried different versions of Thunderbird but the import function doesn’t notice outlook as my default email client.

There are various applications I have seen on the web that claim to export from outlook to Thunderbird and/or Evolution, has anyone used one that works ?

My need is to export email, calendar and contacts. Would also consider another email client instead of Evolution.

Any input from someone who has achieved this would be appreciated.

#2

This might not be very helpful but I seem to recall having a similar “thunderbird doesn’t recognize outlook” issue a few years ago, unfortunately I don’t recall the exact problem or what the solution ended up being but it was to do with the version of outlook. Maybe 32 vs 64 or 2007 vs 2010.

#3

This may not be the solution you wanted, but I wrote a few Outlook “export” macros. Bulk exporting Outlook Notes and Outlook Contacts (to individual VCF files) is possible.

See:

Believe you can combine multiple VCF files into a common one and then bulk import that. You may need to check though as it’s been numerous years.

I use LastPass to mirror Outlook Notes and there is a macro for that too.

#4

Thanks for the suggestion.

Eventually I found a path while painful was a one time effort. For those who might be interested:

  1. On windows install Thunderbird v17 (yes it’s old) using Thunderbird it can import Outlook emails when outlook is set as the default client.
  2. Contacts can be exported in CSV file
  3. Calendar can be exported in ics file
  4. On windows locate the Profiles folder for Thunderbird and copy to linux machine
  5. In Evolution recreate your folders (painful) then drag and drop the folders from the Thunderbird profile onto Evolution. You can also use the import feature but it also only does "one folder " at a time.
  6. Then contacts and calendar can be imported into Evolution using the import feature.

Only had a few Notes I wanted to copy over, it didn’t import well so did it manually.

Evolution does have a pst import feature but it would not work for me, no error the application just crashed after 10mins.

I do have Exchange Server 2007 setup on a suite of vms, which I would have tried to utilise for the migration.

Really tricky to find info on Evolution out there I found some tips by add suse to the search string.

#5

That was probably what I was thinking of. You had to use an older version of TB to get it to work not an older version of Outlook.

#6

I have the feeling that the latest version of Outlook pst file will import into Evolution. But after that it’s trial and error.