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Outlook Express 6 messages won't transfer to new client

I transferred a customer from WinXP to Win7. His mail client was Outlook Express and we were converting to Windows Live Mail. I transferred the mail but all of the messages did not transfer. All of the folders did, but not all of the messages in the folders. I tried again on the old PC. I installed Outlook 2003 and tried this way. Similar results. I get the folders but not all of the messages. Any ideas?
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John
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Transfer from Outlook Express to Outlook 2003 should work (I have moved everything from Outlook Express to Outlook 2002 with no issue).

My guess is there is too much email, that is, the size of the emails exceeds OE capacity. Another thought is that OE has done a cleanup.

Does Outlook Express still open? Try this, move some email in larger folders to a new folder. That is, reorganize the mail. Then try importing again to Outlook 2003.
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None of the files exceed OE limits so this shouldn't be an issue. Only one file is above 1GB. All of the mail is still available in OE.
I would try copying the mail to new folders and trying again. Something is wrong or it would work,
Are you saying create new folders in OE and transfer the existing messages to those folders and then try the transfer again?
Yes, that is what I am saying. I hope space permits. OE has a limit just short of 2 GB, and so you might have issues.

Outlook 2007 has a much bigger limit than Outlook 2003. Can you try importing in Outlook 2007?
Yes it has a limit but that is per file. It will just be labor intensive.
The overall limit for OE is just short of 2 GB. The limit for an Outlook 2003 PST file is 2 GB. So this might be your issue. Try a newer version of Outlook (2007 or newer).
I have used OE on customers computers for years. OE has files on the drive for each folder in OE. Each of the files has the limit. So you have 1.98GB for Inbox, 1.98GB for Sent Items, Deleted, Job # 45, etc. I have had many near 2GB files/folders in a users OE. It isn't a combined total. An example would be a customer that wants to keep history. When the Inbox, Sent Items, or whatever folder would near the limit the old file would be renamed in Windows and OE would create a replacement for the missing file. In this way all of the previous files would be intact and the new file would begin building. This has been discussed on the web for years.
From my experience, that overdrives OE and you will definitely need a newer version of Outlook to make the conversion.
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I copy the OE files to a portable drive and connect it to the new PC. I usually copy them to the Users folder before importing them to Live mail. Yes they were imported under Imported Folder. After that I close down Live mail and copy the folders from Imported to the appropriate locations (Inbox, Sent, etc.) through windows. Live mail is then restarted and it begins to populate the messages as they should be. This is much faster than copying them through Live mail. With OE and Outlook 2003 I exported the messages from OE to a pst in Outlook.
I did not compact first. I will try this before I try John's suggestion as that will take quite a while. The compact may be lengthy as well but I can start it and it will run by itself.
The compact would not complete. I got an error stating that the folder was open by OE or another application. I looked the error up and it said to do a manual compact which was what I was trying to do. If that failed it said to create a new folder, move the messages to the folder, close OE, delete the faulty inbox dbx, restart OE which will recreate inbox.dbx, and move the messages to the new inbox. This also fails so I guess there is something wrong with OE. I will pick this back up Monday. It will be here when I get back.
Let us know on Monday, and see if you can find a newer version of Outlook to try. Also, based on your last post, there may be a problem between OE and your folders. If you can copy to different folders that may help.
It won't copy. I'm going to try with another OE.
You may have corrupted files. See what happens with another OE.
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Another method I have used is to simply drag and drop messages out of Outlook Express into separate Windows Explorer folders as *.EML files, then drag them from those folders into new folders created in Windows Live Mail.

If you have any doubts about the integrity of the DBX files that have been exported from Outlook Express, you can use the following standalone mail reader to check that the messages are still readable.
http://www.mitec.cz/mailview.html
Don't click the "Browse Current OE Store" in the opening dialog, click the "Browse" button:
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Yes and it wont allow a compact. I have already spent far more time than I will be compensated for so I am going ahead with my solution. Thanks for the responses.
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Good idea.
I didn't realize this question was still open. There was no real fix for this problem. There were great suggestions and under normal circumstances they would have worked, but this was beyond ordinary. The work around was to take him back his old computer, disable the incoming mail so no more mail would get trapped in that black hole called Outlook Express 6. This would allow him to forward any mail he needed to himself. Thanks for the responses.
Thank you jbcbussoft