Can't import mail from Outlook with 31.8
I'm trying to bring all of my Outlook 2007 over to Thunderbird since Office 2007 is no longer supported by MS. I've downloaded 31.8 as directed elsewhere in this group but when I select mail to import, it runs for quite some time (hours) and gets to about 80% on the progress bar then an error window opens that says it can't open a temporary file and save it as a draft. The import process stalls at that point although Thunderbird gives no indication that it has stopped importing. I let t run overnight and the progress bar didn't move any further even though it gave the appearance of being active. The particular file the error message reported does not exist on my computer. See screen dump attached. The "Sent Mail" folders you can see in the screen dump were not imported. They just appeared after I had set up my mail account in Thunderbird. (?) Well, it seems the "add image" function here doesn't work either. It's been saying it's downloading the image for nearly 5 minutes and it's not even 200k, so here's what the error message said - "Unable to save your message as draft. Unable to open the temporary file C:\Users\(me)\AppData\Local\Temp\mapiattach.tmp. Check your 'Temporary Directory' setting." Check the Temporary Directory setting for what, and where is it anyway? Can someone offer any assistance here please?
Modified by Ken G
All Replies (11)
Are you sure TB 38 was recommended for the import? I think the process was broken in 38, and it's better to use 17 or 58beta.
Sorry, a bit of dyslexia there. It's 31.8 that I used, not 38.1. This was recommended somewhere in these pages with an active link to download that particular version. I've edited my original question to show 31.8. Thanks for pointing this out.
Modified by Ken G
According to my first link, "Version 17.09 is probably your best bet as version 24.* and 31.* sometimes crash when importing".
sfhowes said
According to my first link, "Version 17.09 is probably your best bet as version 24.* and 31.* sometimes crash when importing".
I did look at that but it's referring to Outlook Express. I'm using Outlook 2007 Ultimate which is quite different from Outlook Express. Is it even around anymore? Maybe I'll try the Beta version.
The paragraph I cited refers to Outlook. TB 58b is available here.
sfhowes said
The paragraph I cited refers to Outlook. TB 58b is available here.
The first link just pointed to an article, not a paragraph, but I did read it. Are you referring to the paragraph about using an imap account such as gmail to transfer the files? I downloaded 58B and started again. After nearly 2 hours and about 80% complete it came up with the same error message about being unable to save an apparently non-existent file as a draft (C:/Users/(me)/AppData/Temp/mapiattach.tmp) Once again it appears to be still working with the light moving across the green progress bar, but the bar itself hasn't moved now in about 40 minutes. What is this file it's looking for? I'll give it a bit longer then I'll try v17.09.
Modified by Ken G
It could be an antivirus problem. If you have an AV program scanning email folders, I would run in Windows safe mode during the import to avoid possible AV interference. In W10, Shift+Restart, Troubleshooting, Advanced Options, Start Settings, Restart, 5.
Thanks for this info. It's getting a bit technical for me now, but after reading the thread in the link you provided, it looks like the mystery file has already been removed by MSE so turning it off or running in safe mode will probably not help unless I reinstall Thunderbird with MSE still turned off. Since Thunderbird appears to run successfully with that mapiattach.tmp file no longer there, could I replace it in the specified location with a dummy file with the same name so that the import process can complete rather than hanging when it encounters that file?
I can't really explain why the import process seems to stall, but I wonder if it might be more effective to use an intermediary like MailStore Home to import from Outlook, then export to a format that is compatible with TB, such as mbox or eml, and then import to the TB Local Folders with the ImportExportTools add-on.
I really have to thank you for sticking with me here. I finally managed to get Thunderbird to complete the import after re-reading the last thread you pointed me to. It appeared that MSE found a problem with the mapiattach.tmp file which is created by Thunderbird and removes it. I've never been able to see that file at any time so I've assumed it is created during the import process, I just told MSE to ignore it, and re-ran the import under 17.09. This time it completed but it doesn't actually put all of the Outlook folders where you would expect. They're all there but in sub folders under the "Local Folders" user. After the import completed, I removed the problem file from MSE's ignore list and re-loaded TBird v 52.6.0 It took a while but I finally got there. Thanks again for your help. Ken G.
It's probably intentional that the imported folders were placed in Local Folders, since, if the accounts were IMAP, importing to IMAP folders could involve significant uploading, especially for large message sets. You can copy from Local Folders to existing accounts by drag-and-drop, but it's recommended to do this in small batches.