Transfer Windows Live Mail to Microsoft Outlook

If you’ve been using Windows Live Mail and plan to upgrade to a new computer, you may want to follow these instructions to get your email transferred. These instructions assume some advanced knowledge of Microsoft Outlook.

1. Go to Office365.com to purchase the full Microsoft Office 2016 suite (if you don’t already have Microsoft Outlook).
2. Setup access to a compatible email account using POP3. This part is important because if you setup a regular Gmail or other IMAP-like synchronizing email account, the system will try to upload (synchronize) your imported emails and that can really slow down the process or cause it to fail.
3. Open Windows Live Mail.
4. Open Microsoft Outlook.
5. From the File Menu in Windows Live Mail, choose Export to Excel.
6. Choose to export all folders or select the ones you’d like to export.
7. If the process completes, Microsoft Outlook will now have a folder with your messages in it.
8. Save your messages to a PST file, or plan on using the default Outlook PST file and copy it to the new computer after the import / transfer is complete.