MS Outlook to Unix Mailbox Conversion mini HOWTO
 Greg Lindahl, [email protected]
 1.0.1, 2001-01-26

 This MiniHowto covers conversion of old email in Microsoft Outlook
 (not Outlook Express!) to typical Unix file formats.
 ______________________________________________________________________

 Table of Contents


 1. Introduction

    1.1 Copyright
    1.2 Disclaimer
    1.3 Related Information
    1.4 News

 2. The Procedure

    2.1 Install an IMAP server (temporarily!) on your Linux box
    2.2 Connect your Outlook client to the server
    2.3 Copy over all your email
    2.4 Deinstall IMAP from your Linux box


 ______________________________________________________________________

 1.  Introduction

 While programs exist to convert some formats such as Microsoft Outlook
 Express to Unix formats, Outlook users are in a bit of a bind. The
 database format that Outlook uses for .PST files, called Jet, is
 documented at:

 http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/techart/olexcoutlk.htm
 <http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/techart/olexcoutlk.htm>

 but there doesn't seem to be any enterprising programmer who's written
 a conversion program yet.


 Fortunately, Outlook is capable of talking to IMAP mail servers, and
 you can store old mail on the IMAP server. So, one easy way to convert
 your mail to a normal format is to install the IMAP server on a Linux
 box and transfer all your email to it.


 1.1.  Copyright


 Copyright (c) 2001 by Greg Lindahl


 Please freely copy and distribute (sell or give away) this document in
 any format.  It's requested that corrections and/or comments be
 forwarded to the document maintainer. You may create a derivative work
 and distribute it provided that you:


 �  Send your derivative work (in the most suitable format such as
    sgml) to the LDP (Linux Documentation Project) or the like for
    posting on the Internet.  If not the LDP, then let the LDP know
    where it is available.


 �  License the derivative work with this same license or use GPL.
    Include a copyright notice and at least a pointer to the license
    used.

 �  Give due credit to previous authors and major contributors.


 If you're considering making a derived work other than a translation,
 it's requested that you discuss your plans with the current
 maintainer.


 1.2.  Disclaimer

 Use the information in this document at your own risk. I disavow any
 potential liability for the contents of this document. Use of the
 concepts, examples, and/or other content of this document is entirely
 at your own risk.

 All copyrights are owned by their owners, unless specifically noted
 otherwise.  Use of a term in this document should not be regarded as
 affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark.

 Naming of particular products or brands should not be seen as
 endorsements.

 You are strongly recommended to take a backup of your system before
 major installation and backups at regular intervals.

 Do not place your cat in a running microwave oven.


 1.3.  Related Information

 A list of conversion utilities, many commercial, may be found at:

 http://www.emailman.com/conversion/index.html
 <http://www.emailman.com/conversion/index.html>


 1.4.  News

 1.01: Fixed minor typo in inetd/xinetd startup instructions.



 2.  The Procedure

 2.1.  Install an IMAP server (temporarily!) on your Linux box

 Installing things varies from Linux distribution to distribution, so I
 will use RedHat 7.0 as an example.  First you need to install the
 correct package, which generally is named "imap".


       cd /home/redhat-7.0-cd/RedHat/RPMS
       rpm -i imap*



 Actually, since I had a "workstation" install, I also had to install
 the xinetd package; rpm gave me an error which told me to do this.
 And, of course, it was on the second CD of RedHat 7.0. Debian users
 using "apt-get" don't have to worry about such issues.

 Next, we need to enable the imap server. This is usually controlled by
 a line in the file /etc/inetd.conf:


       #imap    stream  tcp     nowait  root    /usr/sbin/tcpd        /usr/sbin/imapd



 The above line is commented out; remove the leading # sign. On RedHat
 7.0 systems and later with xinetd, instead edit /etc/xinetd.d/imap and
 change "disable=yes" to "disable=no".


 Then restart inetd or xinetd by doing:


       /etc/rc.d/init.d/inetd restart



 or


       /etc/rc.d/init.d/xinetd restart



 If all else fails, reboot.


 You don't actually want to leave the IMAP server enabled for that
 long. This server runs as root and has had security bugs in the past.
 For this reason, you shouldn't leave it enabled unless you wish to use
 it permanently. We will disable this server in step 4.


 In order to connect Outlook to this IMAP server, you will need to know
 the name or IP address of the Linux box.


 2.2.  Connect your Outlook client to the server

 In order to copy over all our email to the server, we need to tell
 your Outlook client about this new server. Select "Accounts..." from
 the "Tools" menu, and then "Add" a new account "Mail...". The
 important items are that the server uses IMAP to download email, that
 the incoming mail server is the name or IP address of your Linux box
 from step 1, and the username and password should be your username and
 password on the Linux box. (As usual, it's a bad idea to use the root
 account on Linux for this purpose.)


 Once you've hit "Finish", set this new account to be the default by
 highlighting it and clicking on "Set as Default". Outlook should
 connect to your IMAP server, and the name of your IMAP server should
 appear at the bottom of your folder list. Click on it; you should see
 an Inbox folder. (Note that if /var/mail/yourusername doesn't exist on
 your Linux box, you won't be able to drag-and-drop any messages into
 your INBOX... and the error message will be confusing. However, that's
 not what we're going to do.)



 2.3.  Copy over all your email

 At this point you can drag and drop entire folders of email from
 Outlook onto the IMAP server name. This will copy the email, including
 all attachments, to the Linux box. Unfortunately it also immediately
 deletes it from Outlook. In order to copy items without deleting them,
 right-click on the folder name and select the "Copy" option. For the
 destination, pick your Linux server at the bottom of the list.


 However, life isn't quite that simple. Outlook supports folders
 containing folders which also contain messages. The Linux IMAP server
 does not support that; a folder is either a regular file containing
 messages, or a directory containing subdirectories and files. So if
 you have folders in Outlook with both messages and subfolders, you
 can't copy the entire tree over to the Linux IMAP server. Another
 incompatibility of the Linux IMAP server is that you have to tell it
 in advance if a new folder will contain subfolders or messages. You do
 this by appending a slash (/) to the folder name when you create it.
 This slash will disappear when the folder is created.


 So, in order to copy a tree of folders to the Linux IMAP server, first
 you need to create a replica of the structure of your existing folders
 on the Linux IMAP server. While you're doing this, note which of the
 existing folders contain both subfolders and messages. You will need
 to move these messages elsewhere. Once you have the overall tree
 created, then you can copy or move groups of folders to the Linux IMAP
 server.


 One final incompatibility to note is that the Linux IMAP server
 doesn't allow folders with slashes (/) in their name. You'll need to
 rename such folders before copying or moving them.


 On the Linux box, folders appear as files and directories in your home
 directory. The format of these files is the usual Unix mail format,
 which most Unix/Linux mail tools either use directly or can convert
 to/from. Files with attachments will have MIME attachments; there is
 also one extra message per folder which is a (useless) header.


 (One piece of data which doesn't get preserved is the original "From "
 line, which contains the envelope address of the email. Fortunately
 you don't actually need that information.)


 2.4.  Deinstall IMAP from your Linux box

 Once you've transferred all of your email, you will want to deinstall
 the IMAP server from your Linux box, for the security reasons
 mentioned earlier. This involves the same 2 steps you took to install
 the server:

 1. Remove the RPMs:


        rpm -e imap



 2. Remove the line in /etc/inetd.conf or /etc/xinetd.d/imap


 3. Restart inetd or xinetd, or reboot.


 Voila! You have taken another step towards a Microsoft-free lifestyle.

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