First of all, I assume that all the email account settings have
already been setup within Outlook on the new computer (as you have been
using Outlook on the new computer successfully to send and receive
email).
If you want to transfer your files you will need to copy the Outlook PST file from your old computer to
your new computer.
To find the location of the PST file, open Outlook
on the old computer and in the left-hand pane you should see a listing
of all your email folders, with the root heading being “Personal
Folders”. This is your Personal Folders PST file which contains all
your email.
- Right-click on the “Personal Folders” heading and select
“Properties”.
- In the Properties window that appears for Personal
Folders, click the “General” tab and the “Advanced” button.
- In the next
window that appears there should be a field called “Filename”. This
denotes the location of the PST file which contains all the email and
folders within your Personal Folders PST file. Write down the location
of the PST file and then click “Cancel” twice to close the two open
windows. (It should be someting like C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\outlook.pst)
- Open Windows Explorer or My Computer and navigate to the location of
your PST file. Be aware, you may need to enable the display of hidden
files and folders to see the path to the PST file, as it might be a
hidden path. To do this, go to the “Tools” menu > “Folder Options”.
In the window that appears, click the “View” tab and enable “Show
hidden files and folders” then click OK to save and close.
- Once you
have located the PST file you can confirm that the file is correct by
looking at the size of the PST file – it should be quite large - mine is about 1.2 GB!
- Copy this file to a USB
hard drive or USB stick if you have one that can hold the size.
- Once the file has been copied to the USB hard drive, disconnect the
USB hard drive from your old computer and then connect it to the new
computer.
- Copy the PST file to a memorable location, such as the
desktop (this is only temporary, and this PST file will be removed once
the email transfer has been completed).
- Now it is time to import the contents of
the old PST file into your installation of Outlook on the new computer by using the in-built
Outlook import function.
- Open Outlook on the new computer then go to
the “File” menu > “Import and Export”. The Import and Export Wizard
window will appear.
- Select “Import from another program or file” and
click “Next”.
- On the next screen asking you to choose the file type,
select “Personal Folder File (.pst)” and click “Next”.
- The next screen
will ask you to select the file to import.
- Click the “Browse” button
and navigate to the location to which you copied the PST file from your
old computer (in our example before this was the Desktop).
- Under
“Options” select one of the options depending on how you wish the
import to behave. I suggest you leave this at the default setting of
“Replace duplicates with items imported” as you should not have any
duplicates.
- Click “Next”. This last screen before the import allows you
to specify exactly what should be imported. If you wish to import
everything from your old PST file (i.e. mail, calendar, contacts, etc.)
then underneath “Select the folder to import from” choose the root
“Personal Folders” node as this will import everything underneath
“Personal Folders” in your old PST file. As you can see, this includes
emails and also the calendar, contacts, and other folders.
- Make sure
“Include subfolders” is ticked and enable “Import items into the same
folder in” then select “Personal Folders”. This will import all the
data under your old Personal Folders into your new Personal Folders.
- Click “Finish” to commence the import. It could take a while
considering the number of emails which need to transfer across.
Once
the process has completed check the results. If you are satisfied then
you can safely delete the copied PST file from your old computer to the
desktop, as
all the data from that file has been imported into your PST file for
your installation of Outlook on the new computer. I would advise to
burn it on a CD/DVD (depending on the size of the file) or store it
somewhere else - it is always a good idea to keep a backup.
If you have any more questions or this description is not clear to you,
just come back here and leave a comment - I'm happy to help.
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