Live Mail to Outlook Transfer – User’s Manual
Note: Live Mail doesn’t come with Windows 10, it contains thr Microsoft Store Mail application (Mail App) pre-installed. If you use Windows 10 to import Windows Live Mail into Outlook, the following instruction applies only if you installed Live Mail manually 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?
Source folder selection
All our products automatically detect the location of source folders. 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. This method works for Outlook 2019, 2016, and prior versions.
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 the source folder 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.
How to find Windows Live Mail 2012 source data location
Default location of the Live Mail 2012 storage is:
C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail\Storage Folders\
You may check where Live Mail Essentials 2012 stores the source files per this sequence:
- Click the File tab, click Options item, click Mail…
- Click Advanced tab, then click Maintenance… button
- Click Store Folder… button
The program will show you the full path to the source folder. The emails are located in the subfolder called Storage Folders. Use them to import Windows Live Mail data to Outlook.
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 Windows Live Mail to PST conversion
Exit the Windows Live Mail application prior to launching 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 the Windows 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 is 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 Windows Live Mail and Outlook 2019, 2016, or an earlier version 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 directory. If it doesn’t happen for some reason, click on “…” (Browse) and navigate to the necessary folder on the hard drive (see “Source 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.
Convert emails from Windows 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 directory. If it doesn’t happen for some reason, click on “…” (Browse) and navigate to the necessary folder on the hard drive (see “Source 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 computer and loaded to Microsoft Outlook.
If Live Mail is not installed on your system, you can still use Live Mail to Outlook Transfer utility. Just copy the Windows 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: Windows 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 for importing emails from Windows Live Mail into Outlook.
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.
Extra Tip 1: Import Contacts from Windows Live Mail to Outlook
To move this data into the new system, you need to export it from Live Mail in the CSV format. This is a piece of cake thanks to the direct export feature. To move CSV contacts into Outlook in a manual way, do the following:
- Click on Contacts at the bottom of the interface.
- Click on the Export button at the top.
- Choose CSV to export the contacts into a single file.
- Use the wizard for importing and exporting data. It is summoned differently depending on the version:
- 2007 and older — go to the File menu
- 2010 and 2013 — from File, go to Open
- 2016 and 2019 — from File, go to Open & Export
- Choose Import from another program or file and click Next.
- Choose the CSV format and click Next.
- Browse to where the previously exported *.csv file is stored and click Next.
- Specify that the Contacts folder is the destination and proceed further.
- Click Finish.
Extra Tip 2: Export Calendar Windows Live Mail to Migrate to Outlook
Unfortunately, the old system cannot sync its calendar data with Outlook. There are no export options, either. All you can do is save the items by forwarding them to the new email address. Import within the Calendar folder is impossible.
You may also want to know:
- How to export Live Mail contacts to Outlook
- How to open PST file and check the result
- How to transfer emails from Thunderbird to Outlook?
Other Tutorials
This is the best tool that I ever used. User friendly GUI, no need to be an expert to convert emails. I just spend a time to find where my Live Mail emails were saved, as I do not have WLM at my PC any more. However this instruction helped me to do so also. Several minutes and all my old emails migrated into Outlook. No any error, everything correct and accurate, even dates and read/unread states. I was surprised to see that this tool also converted WLM folders, and I do not need to create them manually. Thank you for this tool and detailed instruction!