cant migrate to thunderbird

Hi. Very freustrating problem.... searched for 3 hours online to find an answer to this problem... I want to go from using outlook email program to thunderbird... fairly simple request i assume... however i cannot seem to find a way of bringing over my outlook messages and addresses into thunderbird... when i use the wizard it gets to a stage that wants me to choose which email program to import from but the list is bare even though i have outlook as my default email program nothing shows at all..... Cannot find anywhere online to help with this..... I am just about to throw thunderbird into the trash and just go to gmail.... Please help....