Offtopic: Export emails from Outlook Express

[Ryan D'Baisse]

If I may offer a small suggestion from a newbie... use IMAP.  It is
MUUUUCH easier than it sounds and you will accomplish your goal in a
matter of minutes.

Fedora comes with Dovecot, an IMAP mail server that can be installed
with just a few clicks of a mouse.  You will have to edit one config
file to specify the location of the mailboxes, but even that can be
copy-n-pasted from the help documentation.  Once you've done that,
simply go into the services panel and start the service.

Once you have Dovecot running, simply add a new "account" to Outlook
Express with the type of "IMAP" and set the server to the IP of the
Fedora box.  Outlook Express will show the "Inbox" of the server along
side of the normal folders.  Then, simply drag all of your messages
from the folders in Outlook Express to the "Inbox" on the IMAP server.

Now, here's the cool part...

I mentioned earlier that you could copy-n-paste one line of text from
the help documentation to the configuration file of Dovecot.  Well, as
long as you chose the line that indicates MBOX format using the user's
home directory, then you will, more than likely, be able to simply
launch your mail client on the Fedora box (I'm using Evolution) and
continue working.  This is not entirely what I did, simply because I'm
anal, but most people tell me it's that easy.

What I did to get the Fedora side taken care of was a bit different. 
Here's what I did...

When I did this, I first moved all of my mail to the IMAP mail server
with Dovecot.  I then lanuched Evolution and setup an IMAP account
pointing to the localhost.  I then pulled all of my messages from the
"Inbox" back to my local folders in Evolution.  When I was done, I
went back into the services panel, stopped Dovecot, and haven't looked
back since.

Now, personally, I'm as green as it gets.  I know almost nothing of
Linux, nor Fedora for that matter.  Still, this whole process took me
about 30 minutes including reading help documentation, setting
everything up, copying messages, etc.  That was about a week ago and I
haven't had any problems since.

Good luck!

R/S
Ryan