Importing rules from Outlook Express

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mark Rae
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M

Mark Rae

Hi,

I've just upgraded to 64-bit Vista Business Edition, and am using Windows
Mail as my newsreader.

On WinXP, I used to use Outlook Express, and have several message rules
there which I would like to bring into Windows Mail, if possible.

I found the following article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/276511 which
describes how to export Registry keys etc.

I tried to follow this procedure, once I'd realised that the Identities key
is not used by Windows Mail. Although the Registry files were successfully
imported, when I went to check them in Windows Mail the actual email
addresses in the rule definitions were garbage - looked like Japanese
characters...

Has anyone successfully managed to export rules from Outlook Express and
import them into Windows Mail?

Any assistance gratefully received.

Mark
 
from whithin your XP must export from registry de rules key ( it is a .reg
file
and with your Vista running, pick wuth righy button to merge the reg file
to get rules running, need to restart computer

sorry i don't know a simplest way to do this



Saludos

Antonio
 
from whithin your XP must export from registry de rules key ( it is a .reg
file
and with your Vista running, pick wuth righy button to merge the reg file
to get rules running, need to restart computer

sorry i don't know a simplest way to do this
Click to expand...

See my original post...
 
Has anyone successfully managed to export rules from Outlook Express and
import them into Windows Mail?
Click to expand...

Figured it out, as follows:

Both Outlook Express and Windows Mail store the individual addresses in the
rule objects as binary (DWORD) strings. If I added (e-mail address removed) and
(e-mail address removed) to a rule, the values would be stored in Outlook Express
like this: http://www.markrae.net/OE.jpg

That is, each individual address is separated by a 00, and there are three
00 values at the end of the string.

However, in Windows Mail, the values would be stored like this:
http://www.markrae.net/WM.jpg

As you can see, there is an additional 00 value between each character.

I strongly suspect that this is because I'm running Windows Mail on 64-bit
Vista, whereas I was running Outlook Express on 32-bit WinXP Pro - either
that, or it's Unicode...

Therefore, although the mechanism of exporting and importing Registry keys
will almost certainly work for 32-bit Windows Mail, it clearly won't for
64-bit Windows Mail, which is why I was getting the garbage.

Hmm - I think I feel a utility coming on... ;-)
 
I meant to answer this earlier. The rules shift to Unicode so you have to
fix that. Here's the basics that I posted back in December. The mail
folders you will have to respecify as they don't carry over.

Okay there are actually 4 issues, but I figured out two of them.

This is for a single rule at the moment. I'll try and program it so it
doesn't have to be done rule by rule.

First export the rule from the machine with OE:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities\{GUID}\Software\Microsoft\Outlook
Express\5.0\Rules\Mail\002

where GUID is the Identity and this is rule 3

Then edit the reg file with Notepad.

Do replace for

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities\{GUID}\Software\Microsoft\Outlook Express\5.0

with

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows Mail

Then save the file.

Then the search strings have been changed to Unicode so set the cursor where
the Rule Criteria start. Then do a second replace until the end of the file
and search for

,

replace with

,00,

Then in the last line of each criteria add

,00

Then save.

Then create a mock rule in the registry with WinMail and close WinMail.
Then delete that mock key in the registry. Make sure the rule number in the
saved reg file matches that that you just deleted.

Then merge the file into the registry.

Open WinMail and go to Tools | Message rules and you see the new message
rule spelled out okay when you click on it, except for the folder name. You
will still have to specify the folder names again because those are coded
numerically, I think.

Anyway, that will work, but its a bit involved to do manually.

steve
 
Anyway, that will work, but its a bit involved to do manually.
Click to expand...

Actually, once I'd figured it all out, it was a piece of cake to update
manually - just very tedious :-)

This is crying out for someone to write a utility...
 
Yeah, yeah. <G>


Mark Rae said:
Actually, once I'd figured it all out, it was a piece of cake to update
manually - just very tedious :-)

This is crying out for someone to write a utility...
Click to expand...
 
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