  MS Outlook to Unix Mailbox Conversion mini HOWTO
  Greg Lindahl, lindahl@pbm.com
  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.



