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Outlook Express import problems

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fr1998
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Last seen: 16 years 1 week ago
Joined: 2008-03-20 15:14
Outlook Express import problems

Just to let inform every one of some problems I had today.
Having installed PortableApps for myself recently with great satisfaction, I offered to do a small installation for my wife featuring simply Firefox and Thunderbird.
Everything went well until I tried to import from her Outlook Express profile to ThunderbirdPortable.
I successfully imported the account, contacts and messages into TP and then did some housekeeping, copying messages from the old folders to the new.
This went well, except that when I tried to delete the "Imported from Outlook Express" folders and then empty the trash, the folders wouldn't delete, and then they returned to their original locations.
As I wish to present a clean setup to her indoors, I then visited the profile folder and found 2 Local Folders ("Local Folders" and "Local Folders-1").
I deleted all instances of the OE files in these folders - data, MSF and SDB.
Reopening TP, I now had the Inbox and Sent folders displaying the number of unreads, but I could not view any messages in these folders. Furthermore, some supplementary folders had been emptied.
Looking at the Properties of these folders, they were set to Arabic coding instead of Western and altering the coding did not work (the changes were ignored).
In short, I spent half a day (dog and a bone) uninstalling and reinstalling TB and importing, and trying various combinations of file/folder deletion/movement. To no avail.
Then, I pulled back from the problem and decided to copy my own previous install which had worked. I installed TB locally on my wife's computer, imported everything to there, did the housekeeping, and then installed a clean copy of TB portable. Copying the profile from HD to USB worked.

I suggest to everyone for now wishing to migrate directly from OE to TBPortable that they use the same path as I.

To the PA developers: This seems like a bug arising from the porting of TB to PortableApps. FYI the both the full and Portable versions of TB were 2.0.0.12.
I would put a copy of this post in a bug report forum, but I can't see it.

I might also add: I am very happy to have discovered PortableApps and look forward to following the developments. It is great and most useful.