How to import Windows Live Mail to Outlook?

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May 13, 2014

by Gordon

Live Mail to Outlook Transfer – User’s Manual

The purpose of this article to help you, possibly an inexperienced user, to transfer all of your Live Mail messages with attachments to Microsoft Outlook or an Outlook PST file. From the technical standpoint, this is a fairly complex process, but Live Mail to Outlook Transfer software makes it a snap by automating nearly all of its parts, so all you need to do is to follow the simple instructions provided below. Ideally, you need both Live Mail and Outlook installed on the same system, but you can use the program without Live Mail to perform partial email conversion.

Note: Live Mail doesn’t come with Windows 10, it contains Microsoft Store Mail application (Mail App) pre-installed. If you use Windows 10 the following instruction applied only if you installed Live Mail manually afterward or you have saved email files and folders from the previously installed Live Mail.

Content of this instruction:

How to find the location of the Live Mail emails?
How to convert emails from Live Mail to PST file?
How to transfer Live Mail emails to MS Outlook directly?

File and folder selection

All our products automatically detect the location of source data files. Live Mail to Outlook Transfer utility is no exception – immediately after start, it checks the necessary system records to find out where Live Mail messages and attachments are stored.

In the majority of cases, the path will be as follows:

C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail\

The program will automatically paste it into the data Source Folder field.

If the program does not detect the path to data files automatically, this may indicate a conflict of profiles, identities, a registry error or any other non-critical problem. In this case, click the “…” (Browse) button to open the standard Windows folder selection dialog and select the source folder manually. Please note that the path specified above may be hidden and not available for selection right away.

To make it visible in Win 7, do the following:

Open Windows File Explorer, click on “Organize” and select the “Folder and Search Options” command from the menu.
Switch to the “View” tab
In “Advanced settings”, find the “Hidden files and folders” node and expand it
Enable the “Show hidden files and folders” radio button
Uncheck the “Hide protected operating system files” option
Click OK.

To make hidden files visible in Windows 10, do the following:

Ensure that you have Live Mail installed at the system, not the Mail App which goes pre-installed.

Open File Explorer window
Select View > Options > Change folder and search options.
Select the View tab
In Advanced settings, select Show hidden files, folders, and drives
Click OK.

Doing this will unhide the previously hidden folders and allow you to select the one containing Live Mail source files in the manual mode.

IMPORTANT: Please note that our products are capable of extracting and converting data from damaged mailbox files of all supported formats.

Key moments of the Live Mail to PST conversion

Exit Live Mail application prior to launch the Live Mail emails conversion. It will release all source data files and allow you to convert Live Mail emails smoothly.

Direct transfer of emails and attachments from Live Mail to Outlook

With Live Mail email conversion tool, we did our best to automate as many operations as possible, and we’ve got 99% of the process covered by the tool. All you need to do it to make a couple of simple choices and confirm your selections. You have two options: direct transfer to Outlook or saving messages to a new PST file. The first scenario is fairly self-explanatory, while the second one allows you to copy the resulting file to any type of drive or cloud storage or transfer it to another system.

Imagine that you have Live Mail and Outlook installed on the same system.

Here is what you need to do to convert your data:

Download and install the latest version of Live Mail to Outlook Transfer on your PC. Installation is fast and easy, and does not require any additional tools to be downloaded.
Run Live Mail to Outlook Transfer. You have to use the 32-bit shortcut if your Outlook version is 32-bit and 64-bit shortcut if your Outlook version is 64-bit.
The program should automatically detect the location of the source files. If it doesn’t happen for some reason, click on “…” (Browse) and navigate to the necessary folder on the hard drive (see “File and folder selection” for details). You can also use the File > Open menu.
Once you have selected a folder and its name has appeared in the Source Folder field.
Click on “Scan Folder” button or use the File > Scan Folder menu to start searching for subfolders and *.eml files in the specified folder.
The names of available Live Mail mailboxes will be shown in the large pane occupying the central part of the program window.
Click “Save PST” or “Import” button (depending on current mode, Save to PST file mode is set by default) to start importing of your messages.
The program will prompt to select the directory to save a new PST file and specify the PST file name. Default File Name will be offered. Chose a folder on your computer to save PST file and click “Save” button. You may select the existing PST file here to append existing PST file.
A new dialog will pop up and prompt you for the destination Outlook folder that your imported messages will be saved to. Choose topmost folder called “Live Mail to Outlook Transfer” if you want to import emails according to their folders structure. Full details about processed items are shown in the log window.
Once the process is over, you can launch Outlook to access your messages. If “Save to PST file” mode was chosen use Outlook menu File > Open > Open Outlook Data File…, select your PST file and confirm opening. Find your pst file in the list of Outlook folders and expand the folders tree by clicking the rectangle symbol at the left.
Read how to open PST file and chck the result.

Saving emails from Live Mail to a standalone PST file on your hard drive

EML to PST conversion

Not only can Live Mail to Outlook Transfer export emails to Outlook, but can also save them to a PST file on your HDD.

To do that, follow these simple steps:

Download and install the latest version of Live Mail to Outlook Transfer software on your PC. Installation is fast and easy, and does not require any additional tools to be downloaded.
Run Live Mail to Outlook Transfer utility. Please use appropriate shortcut to run the tool that supports the similar bitness that Outlook have.
The program should automatically detect the location of the source files. If it doesn’t happen for some reason, click on “…” (Browse) and navigate to the necessary folder on the hard drive (see “File and folder selection” for details). You can also use the File->Open command to do it.
The program will show a list of available folders in the left panel.
If you want to save data to a PST file on your hard drive, use the Mode->Save to PST file command to switch modes. When this mode is enabled, the title of the “Import” button will change to “Save”.
Click on “Save”. The program will prompt you for a folder for the resulting PST file.

The resulting PST file can be immediately copied to another system and loaded to Microsoft Outlook.

If the Live Mail is not installed on your system, you can still use Live Mail to Outlook Transfer utility. Just copy the Live Mail data folder from any other system and convert its contents into a PST file. Copy the PST file to the destination system and load it in Outlook to access the converted emails.

Note: Live Mail stores the long folders names truncated to 8-11 characters followed by a space and three random alphanumeric characters. The correct representation of the folder names is stored in the encoded database which can not be accessed due to security reasons. Due to the fact that our software takes the folders structure from the file system the long folder names may appear truncated and you may need to rename some folders in Outlook manually to restore their initial names. However it is the minimum manual work that may be required.

As you can see, moving your emails and attachments from one application to another is a breeze with Live Mail to Outlook Transfer software. It works for MS Outlook of versions 2019, 2016, 2010 and earlier releases. Should you, however, have any problems converting your emails using this product, please do not hesitate to contact our support with a description of your problem, and we will do our best to get back to you as soon as possible.