Recovering Old Windows Live Emails

[ProDave]

You may recall MRS PD's lappy died a few months back.

The HDD was seriously unwell and it would not boot.

It was given a new life with a new HDD and ubuntu.

She would like to be able to at least view a few of the old emails left on the old HDD.

The old HDD is in a USB caddy now and it can be accessed and most stuff can be read from it.

So we have a couple of windoze XP machines in the house.

Can we install Windows Live on these? if so, where and what file(s) are the emails stored in, and what's involved in copying them.

Or can any other application view the old emails?

 

[steptoe]

Would they not be on the server?

I have no idea about windows live, or any mail server for that matter. 

 

[NozSpark]

What program did you used to use to read emails on the old "pc" (before it became a Linux pc?

 

[ProDave]

Windows Live was the program.

I've found them now.  They are all stored as individual *.eml files.  The "problem" was trying to find them with windoze explorer hides most of the system files. A good old fashioned dos prompt and "dir *.eml /s" found them (it's not fussy about showing things in hidden folders)

So I know know where they are stored on the old disk. I now want to copy them to the correct place so I can read them.

So next question, on windoze XP where does Microsoft Outlook store it's emails by defaul?

 

[NozSpark]

Sorry..... Didn't realise that Windows live was the software

 

[Steve3948]

users/name/app data/local/microsoft/Outlook

This is for Windows 8.1 but they are almost the same.

 

[ProDave]

Well whatever I do, I just can't get Outlook to read them in and display them in it's normal inbox structure.

BUT if I double click on an individual file in windoze explorer, it will open and display each individual email.

The downside of doing it that way is the file name of each file is just a seemingly random string of characters, so it's hard to tell what mail is what, apart from the date of the file.

The bad news is probably three quarters of the .eml files are 0 bytes in size and obviously empty when you open them. So it looks like the email she was looking for has been lost.

 

[Steve3948]

I'm sure outlook is .pst so they would need converting, I did something similar when I wanted to import thunderbird emails into Outlook.

Have you tried import in Outlook.

 

[ProDave]

I tried "importing" to outlook, and it have just about every file option apart from .eml

Outlook express is the one that reads .eml files (that's what opens if you double click one) but try as I might, I still have not found where it stores it's files to just try copying them there.

Anyway it looks like she has lost most of the old emails on the old hdd so the exercise is finished.

 

[Steve3948]

For XP Windows Live files location

C:\Documents and Settings\ logon \Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail

 

[ProDave]

Yes but on XP, where does Outlook Express store it's files?  Certainly not there, and not in the same place as the full version of Outlook.

 

[Steve3948]

is it not same location but Outlook instead of Windows Live.

drive:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

or

drive:\Users\<username>\My Documents\Outlook Files

This page should explain.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-001/outlook-help/locating-the-outlook-data-files-HA103412630.aspx