Trying to export my mail and contacts from Outlook into Gmail, but the file extension msnbak which Outlook produces isn’t recognized by Gmail. Is there a way around this or a utility that will do an appropriate conversion?

I’m not sure how you went about doing the exporting, so I’m going to walk you through the process step by step - there is one process for email and one for contacts.

Importing Outlook Email into Gmail

This process has gotten easier since Gmail supports IMAP protocol. It works with Outlook as well as Thunderbird and other providers.

First, you need to be sure that IMAP is enabled in Gmail - it probably is because it is the default, but we’ll give instructions on that anyway.

1. Sign into Gmail. Click on Settings
2. Choose Forwarding and POP/IMAP.
3. Select “Enable IMAP”.

Now, you need to setup Gmail in the client software:

1. Open Outlook Express, go to Tools and then Accounts.
2. Click on Add and then Mail.
3. Enter your name in the “Display Name” field. Click Next.
4. In the email address field enter your Gmail address. Click Next.
5. For “My Incoming Mail Server is a __ server”, choose IMAP.
6. In “Incoming Mail (POP3, IMAP, HTTP)” enter: imap.gmail.com
7. In “Outgoing mail (SMTP) server” field, enter: smtp.gmail.com and click Next.
8. In the account name field, enter your full email address. Enter the password and click Next. Click Finish.
9. Now go to Account and highlight: imap.gmail.com and click Properties.
10. Choose Advanced.
11. Under “Outgoing Mail (SMTP)”, check “This server requires a secure connection (SSL)”.
12. In “Outgoing Mail (SMTP)” enter: 465.
13. Under “Incoming mail (IMAP)”, check “This server requires a secure connection (SSL)”. The port should change to 993.
14. Click on the Servers tab. Check the box marked “My server requires authentication” and click Ok.

Now, for client settings - Go to Tools and then Options and Send tab. Do NOT check “Save a copy of sent messages in the Sent Items folder”. Check “Send messages immediately”.

This will create a Gmail folder structure in Outlook that will match the Gmail labels. Open all your old archive.pst files if you have them. Drag and drop all of your old emails into the new IMAP account inbox folder. If you don’t want to move them, choose “copy”. Do the same thing with the “Sent Mail” folder. It may take a while, depending on the number of emails you are moving.

Copy Contact List from Outlook to Gmail

1. Go to Outlook. Open File and then Import and Export.
2. Select “Export a file”. Click Next.
3. Choose “Comma-separated values”. Click Next.
4. Find Contacts and select Next.
5. Name the file and save it. It should have the .csv extension.
6. Now, get into Gmail.
7. Find the Contacts on the left and select Import.
8. Click Browse to fine the .csv file you created earlier.
9. Click Import” to import the contacts.
10. You should see the number of contacts added, merged, ignored or how many were duplicates.

I hope these directions help you import the files you want successfully. If you need more assistance, please let us know.

Kat Delong | June 18th, 2009
Tags: e-mail export, export e-mail, export message, import e-mail
Categories: Email

You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.