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Recently, my hard drive crashed (click... click... clickly clickly click click...). I was using XP and do NOT have my install discs (lost them 3 moves ago...).

i make backups regularly and only lost roughly 3 days worth of material (nothing really important). On my other PC I've been running linux forever. I don't need windows and have installed a new HD in the PC and put fedora on there w/ no issues. Running like a champ.

Now historical email... There seems to be many workarounds for getting dbx files to mbox INSIDE windows, but how would I accomplish this task without a windows install anywhere (Virtual installs are out as I do not have any install discs for windows anyways). After a quick search, I only found one possible solution (in perl) and am looking for something that I don't have to program my self. I am a programmer by trade but have never programmed in perl (c++, FORTRAN, matlab, python... yes) and at this point, don't feel like learning new syntexs for this one problem (python has been my goto scripting language for everything linux...).

Any other ways around this?

EDIT: After looking at the comments, I've searched a lil more and here's a lil tid bit from mozillazine... Interestingly enough, BOTH links to tools to convert dbx to mbox are dead >:( and it only speaks of importing from Outlook Express directly... NOT from just the dbx files :(

Thanks for the ideas tho, keep them coming as I really don't want to use the perl lib to do it...

Also if anyone has a link to a c++ lib(link to documentation?) that does the same thing... I might take a look at that and make a gui for it... then release it for others...

g19fanatic
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  • Not an answer as I don't know for sure, but I could of sworn that Thunderbird had an import option that understand Outlook files directly? – William Hilsum Nov 16 '10 at 12:48
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    Thunderbird does have an option to import Outlook express files, IIRC – Sathyajith Bhat Nov 16 '10 at 15:23
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    It only has an option to import Outlook express files IF you currently have express installed... which isn't viable in this situation... Or atleast that what i've seen when I have tried... and I have spent a long time trying... – g19fanatic Nov 16 '10 at 20:48
  • the gpl dbxconv appears to be here now: http://www.ukrebs-software.de/english/dbxconv/dbxconv.html – martin clayton Dec 21 '10 at 10:59
  • martin clayton: thanks for the link. I will have to take a look at it. Should have put this as an answer tho so you'd get some credit for finding a solution (if it does indeed work in the end). – g19fanatic Dec 21 '10 at 18:14
  • @g19fanatic: +1 - I too need such a solution. I want to convert .dbx files to .pst format on a linux system. Do you know anything that works for sure? You may check my question http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4780870/ideas-about-linux-based-solutions-for-parsing-email-storage-files-of-ms-outlook – Sandeepan Nath Jan 25 '11 at 06:36
  • @Sandeepan Nath, There is a library that does it but no one (from what I can tell) has implemented it into a solution. I took the easy way and copied the PST files over to a friends house who had windows. Installed Thunderbird and it all was easy from there (because my friend also uses Outlook express for his client, it was ez). – g19fanatic Jan 25 '11 at 12:13
  • @g19fanatic can you tell me the name of the library? I will try it. Thanks. It would be great if we could do it programmatically on a linux server. For more specific details please check my question http://superuser.com/questions/237540/wine-supported-automated-batch-conversion-tool-to-convert-outlook-dbx-files-to. See if you can help with something – Sandeepan Nath Jan 25 '11 at 12:32
  • http://search.cpan.org/~vparseval/Mail-Transport-Dbx-0.07/Dbx.pm its a perl library (a language I am not familiar with, or I would have created my own solution) – g19fanatic Jan 25 '11 at 12:35
  • http://freshmeat.net/projects/libdbx/ underlying library used in the above perl one. – g19fanatic Jan 25 '11 at 12:36

2 Answers2

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Since no one posted a solution that was implemented nor throughly documented, I will post my solution.

As above, I simply went to a friends house who has windows installed and did the conversion the way that everyone else does it... on windows...

Another way to do this would be to run a virtual machine to do what you need but I did not have my discs as this wasn't a solution for me.

g19fanatic
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you can use undbx - a tool to extract e-mails from Outlook Express .dbx files.

https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/xenial/man1/undbx.1.html

Martin Monperrus
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