Data transfer from PC to iMAC

[SpiceGrrl]

Dear Confident Mac Whizzes,

I've been a PC user for 25 years and have decided to go Mac. Tomorrow is the Big Day when I bring my Sony Vaio laptop (with Vista, ick) to the Mac store, buy all my new goodies and give them my laptop so they can transfer my data. I am overwhelmed with anxiety about the data transfer. I work for myself and my entire life is on that laptop. My main worry has to do with my emails. I have about 6,000 emails in Outlook (recently cut down from 20,000) that are critical to my business, in a somewhat elaborate Personal Folder system (folders within folders). Also, I use Dropbox for all my documents, pictures, videos and music. Questions for you:

* Do Outlook emails and addresses import well into Mac Mail? How about the folder structure?

* The guy at the Mac store said I should get everything out of Dropbox before the transfer. He said put everything in its MS-designated place: the documents go in My Documents, pictures in My Pictures, videos in My Videos, etc. Do you agree? (I plan to drop Dropbox and go Mobile Me when I get the Mac).


* What else can I do to prepare, to make the transfer as easy and successful as possible?

* Am I right to be so nervous or should I just CHILL because these people do this all the time?

You have been so wonderful in the past--thank you and I hope for a little more help now.

Trembling,

SpiceGrrl

 

[87vert]

I don't think MacMail will be able to import your pst. (personal folders) you may need to get Office for Mac which will allow you to do it.

As long as they don't delete anything on the laptop you will still have it in case anything is missing.

 

[SpiceGrrl]

Thank you 87vert. Outlook is indeed the big issue. Anyone else have any thoughts about this? Maybe it deserves its own thread.

Meanwhile, regarding the documents, I just got advice from another person who recently made the transition, that I should NOT move all my documents, pictures, videos, etc out of dropbox, because Dropbox works fine with Mac. My files can be accessed just fine via the new Mac, and I can pull them down myself as needed. That sounds sensible.

So tell me this: If I am currently using Dropbox but want to use Mobile Me, is it easy to move my files from Dropbox to Mobile Me? (From one cloud to another?)

 

[rkaufmann87]

So tell me this: If I am currently using Dropbox but want to use Mobile Me, is it easy to move my files from Dropbox to Mobile Me? (From one cloud to another?)

If you decide to do that it should be a drag and drop process however it will be slow if you have a lot of data due to bandwidth issues. My suggestion would be to stay with Dropbox and buy more space as you need it.

The transition from PC to Mac isn't very difficult I did it 3 years ago and it really was just a drag and drop process.

BTW congratulations on taking the step and welcome to the light side.

 

[SpiceGrrl]

Hi Rkaufmann87, thank you for your reply and I appreciate the congratulations.

I am a lot more optimistic about the documents, pictures, etc. now than I am about the Outlook items. These emails, and the folder structure itself which organizes them, are CRITICAL to my business. But I do not want to use Outlook on the Mac unless I absolutely positively have to. I'm going to start a new thread about this elsewhere, but if anyone reading this has experience transferring Outlook emails to Mac Mail, please please share.

 

[arsene]

Hi Rkaufmann87, thank you for your reply and I appreciate the congratulations.

I am a lot more optimistic about the documents, pictures, etc. now than I am about the Outlook items. These emails, and the folder structure itself which organizes them, are CRITICAL to my business. But I do not want to use Outlook on the Mac unless I absolutely positively have to. I'm going to start a new thread about this elsewhere, but if anyone reading this has experience transferring Outlook emails to Mac Mail, please please share.

I bought a Macbook Pro for my wife in May 2010. I converted her outlook mail containing 10 year worth of .pst file (containing mails, contacts & calenders) to apple mail using Outlook to Mac Mail software with 100% success. Before that, I tried the highly rated outlook2mail offered by Little Machine with little success as it fails to import folders.

Please click on link to the software
http://www.convertmyemail.com/outlook-to-mac-mail.php

 

[arsene]

There is another alternative.

Buy Office for Mac 2011 and use the Outlook to import your .pst file.

 

[SpiceGrrl]

Arsene, thank you so much, I will ask them at the Mac store if that is what they use. How long did it take you to do it yourself? And why did you do it yourself as opposed to having them do it?

 

[arsene]

Arsene, thank you so much, I will ask them at the Mac store if that is what they use. How long did it take you to do it yourself? And why did you do it yourself as opposed to having them do it?

If you are contented to use Outlook in the soon to be launched Office for Mac 2011, then this is the easiest way to import your Windows .pst files into your Mac Outlook.

I did not ask them to do so as I bought the Macbook Pro before I paid for the online software to convert the .pst files into Apple Mail. We have Mac for Office 2008 but do not want to use Entourage, which also does not handle .pst files. That explain why I have to do the conversion on my own. In any event, the conversion process is easy to follow, even without reading the documentation which is I think about 16 pages long.

The folder structure and the attachments in all the Win emails are transferred correctly and accurately.

 

[SpiceGrrl]

Yes, it would be easy to wait for the new Office for Mac suite in a few weeks and just continue using Outlook on the Mac, BUT, I am so angry at Microshaft after 25 years of disappointment that I would prefer never to buy another Microshaft product again. I really want to go Mac, whole-hog.

I wonder if the guys in the Mac store who will be converting my data have purchased that utility for this purpose. Surely I cannot be the first person ever to have years worth of treasured emails in Outlook.

 

[blomma]

I cant help you much about moving over your mail, but i can say that dropbox works wonders on the mac. I share folders across mac, windows and linux all the time. So in your case all you would have to do is to install dropbox on the mac and link it to your account and just let the inital sync complete and you are good to go.

The best advice i can give you about moving your mail is to ask them when you go down there with your laptop.

 

[sentros]

I remember doing this for a friends dad who migrated into a mac and I could not come up with a free solution. If I recall correctly I used Emailchemy. Now it does cost 30 bucks but like my friends dad said, with his hourly wage there's no point in trying to spend a crap load of time trying to figure out a free solution because time is money.

Also my friends dad had his own weird foldering system and it remained intact after the conversion so you should be covered there. Just thought you might be interested.

 

[SpiceGrrl]

Epilogue: I did let the Mac store do my transfer and also ascertained that they use the same third party software that has been discussed here: Outlook2Mail or whatever it's called. That is apparently the best product out there for the purpose. However, it is not a perfect product. It is very slow. My emails took 4 days to transfer and the total data transfer took 6 days. Part of the problem MAY have been that I kept two backup copies of my Outlook data in Dropbox. My theory is that the program searches the entire computer for ALL pst files, and converts them all whether you like it or not. Had I known that, I might have deleted those archive copies before taking it in because more than half of the transfer was unnecessary. But I asked them in the store if that would have helped and they said No, it only transfers the stuff that is actually in Outlook. Whatever...maybe they're right, maybe I'm right, we may never know. But the bottom line is, IF YOU ARE TRYING THIS, DELETE ALL UNNECESSARY ARCHIVES AND BACKUPS BEFORE BEGINNING. Also, prepare for it to take forever.

Note that this really only applies to super-intensive email users and savers like me. If you don't do a lot of email, or if your saved emails are not that important to you, consider skipping this agonizing step and just starting over from scratch in Mail.