Common Ways to Export Thunderbird to Outlook Emails

In this tutorial, you’ll get a glimpse of how to transfer emails from Thunderbird to Outlook. Some of the methods have been explained including both manual as well as using the best MBOX to PST Converter. Also, you’ll get a proper approach to handle the limitations of these methods.

Every organization uses one of the email clients from a varied pool of email applications available as per their convenience and suitability. MS Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird are two important email applications that are used by a large pool of audiences at their workplaces. But, Microsoft Outlook is having an edge over Thunderbird and other applications because of its advanced features. Hence, people export Thunderbird to Outlook email files.

Outlook and Thunderbird – An Overview

Mozilla Thunderbird is an open-source client featured with emailing, news and chat groups, themes and extensions, managing news feeds, junk filtering, etc. It uses .mbox file extension to store its data files.

Outlook email is a product of Tech giant Microsoft. It is preferred over any other email client because of its prominent and effective features. It uses a .pst file extension and saves all the mailbox contents such as emails, events, journals, contacts, calendars, tasks, etc. Users easily recover items in Outlook.

There are a plethora of reasons that Outlook is much preferred over Thunderbird. Mozilla Thunderbird is not compatible with the Exchange server and doesn’t allow the scheduling of emails. Also, it doesn’t allow filtering of emails and contains only emails and attachments offering low security as compared to Outlook. Due to all these reasons, many users import Thunderbird to Outlook.

Methods to Export Thunderbird to Outlook

To migrate from Mozilla Thunderbird to Microsoft Outlook, you’ll have to export the MBOX file to Outlook PST file format. It’s not that easy task, you’ll have to complete it in two steps. In the first step, export it from the source email platform and then import it to the destination email application. It can be done using some manual as well as automated methods which have been illustrated in the blog. Just, go through these approaches to convert Thunderbird to Outlook.

#1 Through IMAP

IMAP, i.e. Internet Message Access Protocol. It’s a standard protocol that allows creating a sync between your email client and another email account in an online manner. As such, you’ll be able to access your email account from multiple email clients. Use the following steps to export Thunderbird to Outlook.

1. Using the IMAP server, configure the Gmail account of yours in Thunderbird.
2. In Gmail, make a new folder and move the messages to it.
3. Now, in Outlook, using POP or IMAP server, create the same Gmail account.
4. Download all emails afterward.

Note: Using this method, you can export only a few emails.

#2 Drag-and-Drop method

In this manual approach, you need to perform two steps for the complete transfer of emails from Thunderbird to Outlook using drag and drop.

Export Thunderbird email messages to EML

• Select the email messages you wish to export from Thunderbird.                   
• Make a new folder on the desktop.
• Now, drag and drop the email messages you have chosen to the folder you just made on your desktop.

Import EML data files to Outlook

• Launch Outlook and move to the folder where you want to transfer the messages
• At last, select the EML files in the updated folder and move to the folder of Outlook PST.

Limitations of Manual Methods

Although, it is a good practice to use a manual approach for MBOX to PST conversion to export Thunderbird to Outlook. Users can merge multiple small PST files and make them into a single PST. But, there are always some limitations associated with manual methods. A large no. of data cannot be migrated manually. Also, the manual process consumes a lot of time and if not performed carefully, you might lose your precious data. A user who did not have prior technical experience may feel difficult to perform MBOX to PST conversion.

Alternative for Thunderbird to Outlook Transfer

If you feel it difficult to process manually, you can employ an MBOX Converter to transfer MBOX to PST format. This is a sophisticated utility designed with an advanced algorithm that export Thunderbird to Outlook easily. It keeps a focus on the integrity of data and makes your data remain intact. The interface is so simple and user-friendly that even a naive user does not feel any difficulty while using it. You are allowed to save the output file to multiple file formats such as PST, HTML, MSG, EML, RTF. This MBOX Converter supports 20+ email clients such as Apple Mail, Mulberry, Poco mail, Spicebird, Sea monkey, etc.

Final Words

In the technical script, we’ve discussed email export Thunderbird to Outlook, methods to transfer emails from Thunderbird to Outlook including both manuals as well as automated approach. Users can follow either of them accordingly for the safe and secure migration of Thunderbird MBOX files. Thanks for visiting this article.