Import mail & contacts from external drive

[Swedix]

Hey,

My dads laptop died a few weeks ago. It was orginally running Windows 7 and was later updated to Windows 10.
He used Windows Live Mail that came with Windows as client and his mailaccount was at his isp.
The drive from the old laptop still works so I could attach it to an USB port on his new laptop (running Win10) with help of an adapter and move over a lot of data.
The problem are the mails and contacts. Windows Live Mail are no longer supported and can't be downloaded.
I convinced my dad to use Thunderbird and now my question is if it's possible to import the mails and Contacts from the old drive.
He never had the chance to export the emails and contacts so they all are in the original form.

We both hope that there are a solution for this.

[LIMPET235]

Hi,
While I am not a Thunderbird guru, this KB article may help you sort it out.
> http://kb.mozillazine.org/Importing_and ... _your_mail
Scroll down to > Windows Mail (aka Windows Live Mail)

Here's Paolo's, "ImportExportTools" link > https://freeshell.de//~kaosmos/mboximport-en.html

Otherwise, wait for someone more proficient with Thunderbird to assist.

[tanstaafl]

See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Move_to_a_new_PC#PC_died

Its easier/better to move the entire profile (it has all of your data, not just the mail and contacts) to the new laptop rather than to create a new profile and import the old mail and contacts into it. However, you can do it either way. See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Importing_folders and http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_addres ... n_profiles if you want to do the latter.

[Swedix]

Thank you for your speedy reply.
I will try your suggestions.

[skuddle]

Let's make sure I understand what you have.

You have Windows Mail on the laptop (Windows 7 system) - right?

I went through the same $hit last February that you are going through now. Unfortunately, I can't offer you any simple solution. What I did was to use the Import/Export Tools application. Can't recall exactly how I did it, but after a couple of days I did manage, using that app, to get all the emails into Tbird. I had to do it one folder at a time, and because I had emails going back to 2002 it did take awhile. (At 74 years old, my patience is not what it used to be.)

Now here's the killer. 'Round about November 8, 2017, my service provider (trusty old Spectrum) made a couple of changes in their mail system. After closing my TB email program and going to bed, I started it up again the next morning. Couldn't send mail. I tried everything I could think of, even calling Spectrum technical support. All they could do is verify that I could send email if I used their web-based email provider. While trying to get things working, my TB profile bit the dust. So I had to go through each email, one by one, and convert them to text or PDF files, then transfer them to my old computer. About a week later, TB came out with one of those XX.XX.XX versions (which I am now using) that addressed something with the Spectrum system. I loaded that version and voila! I could now send emails without using the web-based server.

Not wanting to do this ever again, I now have all my emails in a separate folder in either text format or as PDFs. I only use TB to send, receive, and read the emails. After reading them, I convert the important ones to text or PDF and store them in my "Saved Emails" folder.

I know it's a hassle but the system works, and I'll be damned if I'm going to spend a penny for Microsoft's Outlook 2016 program.