How to Import Outlook and Thunderbird Accounts in 2019
Posted by Jason Ephraim on December 26, 2018
New Feature Announcement:
Outlook and Thunderbird Account Import
That’s right! Starting today, folders, settings, and messages from popular POP3 email clients like Outlook and Thunderbird will import automagically when connected. That means that any folders, emails, or anything else we can bring into Mailbird through your other client’s POP3 or IMAP connection can be instantly imported with the click of a button!
We’ve had a ton of requests for this feature, and it has taken a lot of time and manpower to make sure that this feature will work for every possible client and version. It’s taken a ton of time to ensure every version of Outlook, Thunderbird and Windows Live Mail will work. We are ecstatic that it is finally ready for you!
Start Importing automagically
Once you installed Mailbird or chose the option to “add another account”, Mailbird will give the option to “import from another email client”.
Mailbird will detect the accounts that you have added to your existing email client. Choose the account you would like to import to your Mailbird.
The last step to activate the import – insert your email address and password and Mailbird will set up the account for you. Depending on how many accounts you have selected in the previous step, you may be asked to enter the details multiple times. One for each account.
Voilà!
That’s it. Mailbird will start the import of your account data, such as folders, settings, and messages. It will also let you know once it is finished.
Please consider that depending on the amount of accounts you would like to import and the size of each, it may impact the duration of the import process.
Should you have any questions, or require assistance at any point of the import process, please send an email to [email protected] – and our awesome Customer Support team will help you solve it asap.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in February 2016 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.
Jason Ephraim
Former Vice President of Growth at Mailbird
41 thoughts on "How to Import Outlook and Thunderbird Accounts in 2019"
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Except it does not work properly. I only have one Outlook profile on my PC with one account. When I attempted to use Mailbird to import it Mailbird displayed the wrong email accounts from some other email profile not outlook that i don’t use anymore.
I can send some screenshots and will create a support ticket but at first attempt the new import feature is a big fail.
Hey Glen, thanks for your feedback. I am sure our support has gotten back to you already. Please make sure your account has not been added to Mailbird yet and also that the account is either IMAP or POP3. Please keep our customer support guys updated on how it is going for you. Thanks for your support.
It doesn’t work! Mailbird not detect my Outlook accounts.
Hey Paul, thanks for your feedback. Please make sure, your accounts are not added in Mailbird yet. Mailbird will only recognise accounts that have not been added yet. Should you still have problems, please send us an email to [email protected] and we will happily help you solve the issue asap.
This looks like a joke to me!
Nothing happens apart from telling me I have to select an account, but how do I do that??
And obviously you can only import Thunderbird and Outlook??? And if I understand your the comment from Christin right then this is only valid for new accounts? Do you mean I should delete old accounts and re-import them? Please make a proper description of this and remember we are many people who like some aspects of Mailbird, but there is a looong way to go before it works properly. But keep up the good work and you will be there one day!
Hey Sven, you can start the Import prices by going to the Mailbird menu and select options. Then press “Accounts” and “Add”. Mailbird will give you the option to import an existing account. The import feature works only for new accounts. That is right as Mailbird will not detect the account if they have been added already. Please do send us a mail to [email protected], if you have any more questions that we can help you with. Thanks for your support and feedback Sven:-)
In my installation Mailbird Pro 2.2.0.0 there is no option to import Thunderbird, only outlook.com.
Hey Erik, Thanks for your feedback and we are sorry to hear you are facing this issue. Please make sure the account you would like to add, hasn’t been added to Mailbird yet. Please send us an email to support(at)getmailbird.com should you still have any questions or issues. Happy Monday:-)
Hi Christin,
As per the last post, you didnt answer the question completely. So, for accounts already in Mailbird, how do we import contacts from Thunderbird then? The vcard thing from Thunderbird to Mailbird never worked for me as I told your cust service dept multiple times. So, do we need to remove the accounts then re-add them? If so, what are the pitfalls, if any? Thanks
What about importing and exporting Mailbird itself; i.e. I have Mailbird set up how I want it on one computer, and now want to install it on my laptop. But don’t want to have to go about adding all the accounts, and settings etc again.
The people complaining that the messages go to a new folder, that’s standard. Just go to the archived folder and move or copy it to the active folder for that account. There doesn’t appear to be a mass “mark as read” option though. If you select every message and right click, mark as read, it still shows thousands of unread messages for me. A problem since I’ve already read the imported messages.
Didn’t import my outlook account. I’ve tried several times. I submitted a support ticket this morning, but haven’t heard from anyone. Disappointing.
Hey Mark,
please make sure the account you would like to import is not added in Mailbird yet. Your ticket should be resolved by now. Happy Tuesday:-)
I imported my accounts from Thunderbird and it worked almost fine, only one (easy fixable) error occurred – for some reason Mailbird got one port wrong (-1 instead of 143).
As for not detecting Outlook accounts – I assume it is intentional that Mailbird doesn’t detect Exchange accounts, since it doesn’t support Exchange (which is by the way the reason why I don’t by Pro).
No joy – high hopes dashed.
After following all steps outlined, restart, sign in to Mailbird, only to find NO (0) Contacts found, and no Thunderbird calendar imported.
Mailbird is useless to me unless it will import over 7 years’ contacts and email lists from Mozilla Thunderbird and Outlook.
I was only looking at Mailbird, to get around the constant freezes and crashes under Windows 10 (junk!), but without my email lists, it is of no use — I’m NOT starting all over on contacts and calendars!
Hey Dave, thanks for your feedback. As you are referring to contacts sync, I am very happy to let you know we will be ideally be able to release it within the next 3 months. We are going to announce the official release date (once confirmed) on our social channels. Thanks for your support.
Hey Dave, we launched our new contact manager with contact sync. Get Mailbird and check it out and let us know what you think:-) https://www.getmailbird.com/new-contact-manager-contact-sync/
What about importing mail & contacts from Incredimail?
I have been extremely happy using outlook express followed by windows mail for the past 16-17 years and recently purchased a new laptop with windows 10 preinstalled… and since then have been looking for a mail client that worked just like windows mail. I found thunderbird to be the best coz I could open mails in a separate window, have a global inbox … BUT BUT I can seem to import all my emails (abt 40000+ emails) which I had in windows mail. it only imports abt 9000 mails and then says mailbox full ??
Shouldn’t the mailbox depend on my harddisk space ?? its like having a webbased email with restriction on storage !!!
Hey Mukesh, thanks for your feedback. I am a little bit confused, are you asking why you can’t import your 40000+ emails to Thunderbird? Please contact Thunderbird support for that matter. Thanks and happy Tuesday:-)
have the same problem, i want to import en email outlook 2007 xxx.pst file from my old computer. I have copied the file on my new computer (with windows 10). mailbird does not find my pst file. where should i put the pst file or how can i know mailbird where the file is?
Instead of doing it ‘automagically’ , do something like for example EM Client has, where you can choose between so many options, like importing from EML folders or straight from dat files. If you have aspirations to be the best email client in the world then immediately put a bit more effort into it. Sorry but this is bad.
I was unable to import my Thunderbird accounts. When i click the ‘Import’ button no accounts are shown. I’m using Windows 10 and have a clean installation of Mailbird (no accounts setted up). Could you help me, please?
Hey Samuel, we are very sorry to hear you are facing this issue. Please make sure,that the accounts you would like to import have not yet been added to Mailbird. Should you still face this issue, please send us an email to [email protected] so we can help you sort it asap:-)
Is it seriously that hard to just implement a simple CSV Import/Export!? Come on!
I’m so sick to death of Mailbird screwing up and I have no backup of anything.
Every few months I do an Update and Mailbird refuses to open after updating. which eventually I have to completely uninstall it, reinstall it and setup all 20+ email accounts one by one. If I could simply do an export of the accounts, never time I can just import it. and I renewed my license last week, didn’t get any email with a new license, and today mailbird decides to shit itself and tell me that the license had expired… so now I gotta wait until late this afternoon for your support team to get online so I can continue working. I lost a whole day of work today!
I can’t even just export everything to Outlook until later this afternoon.
Please stop over complicating things, For the love of god! Just allow me to export everything to a CSV. Please. That’s all I ask for.
I’m sorry, I was one of the first customers you guys ever had, I subscribed with you years ago and I’ve patiently been waiting for you guys to fix your issues and improve. and I think 2-3 years is quite a lot of time for you to fix that stupid bug that stops mailbird from opening after an update. I’ve spoke to Leo so many times about it and i continue to have the same issue almost every time I update on 3 different PC’s, on Windows 7,8 and 10. Still not fixed. You can understand why I’m cracking the shits over it.
Please get your stuff together. Give us a simple Import/Export. Fix your Licensing system!! and fix that bug that prevents mailbird from opening when you update.
Is it seriously that hard to just implement a simple CSV Import/Export!? Come on!
I’m so sick to death of Mailbird screwing up and I have no backup of anything.
Every few months I do an Update and Mailbird refuses to open after updating. which eventually I have to completely uninstall it, reinstall it and setup all 20+ email accounts one by one. If I could simply do an export of the accounts, never time I can just import it. and I renewed my license last week, didn’t get any email with a new license, and today mailbird decides to shit itself and tell me that the license had expired… so now I gotta wait until late this afternoon for your support team to get online so I can continue working. I lost a whole day of work today!
I can’t even just export everything to Outlook until later this afternoon.
Please stop over complicating things, For the love of god! Just allow me to export everything to a CSV. Please. That’s all I ask for.
I’m sorry, I was one of the first customers you guys ever had, I subscribed with you years ago and I’ve patiently been waiting for you guys to fix your issues and improve. and I think 2-3 years is quite a lot of time for you to fix that stupid bug that stops mailbird from opening after an update. I’ve spoke to Leo so many times about it and i continue to have the same issue almost every time I update on 3 different PC’s, on Windows 7,8 and 10. Still not fixed. You can understand why I’m cracking the shits over it.
Please get your stuff together. Give us a simple Import/Export. Fix your Licensing system!! and fix that bug that prevents mailbird from opening when you update.
That is all
Hey Petru, thanks for your message and feedback. We are sorry to hear you are still facing this issue. As it is only a very few amount of users that are facing it update issue, it is very difficult for us to sort out.
Regarding the feature request, we are working on a lot of things, but they take time. Every “little” feature takes a lot of time developing, testing releasing etc. We still are a small team, but trust me, we are working very hard on making as many people happy as possible:-) Have a wonderful week and we really appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback.
Hi Petru, thanks for your feedback.
Our developers are currently studying a way to save the data in Mailbird, sadly we can’t use CSV to store all information contained in mails so they’re looking for the best solution possible.
We really regret the issues you have after updating Mailbird, please contact support any time you have it, there’s usually an easy workaround to get your data back and reporting it can help us looking for the source of the problem and help other users solve it.
Last week, I migrated entire Thunderbird mailbox items into Outlook 2013 successfully. I did a lot of research on manual method but failed to find any suitable reference. So, I tried a third party email converter – Stellar MBOX to PST Converter, which successfully exported Thunderbird mail items in PST
Running EM Client and I have some emails archived back to 2008 from when I used Outlook. Had high hopes for Mailbird as it looks great and seemed ultra responsive. However, it all turned to rubbish when it didn’t even know I had EM Client on my PC during install. It failed to import anything automatically and I could not manually import my archived emails. If you want Mailbird to be treated seriously you need to lift your game considerably. No good having the prettiest car when you cannot drive it.
i physically copied the Outlook Express .iaf files (accounts) and .dbx files (folders) to the new machine. I cannot get Mailbird to look at them. What’s up with that?
Thanks you sharing information.
I have used KTools PST Converter software, it helped me to save all
my .pst files in .mbox format and after that import them into
Thunderbird email account.
http://www.ktoolssoftware.com/pst-converter.html
Convert Mac Outlook to Windows Outlook without loss of data then download OLM to PST Converter Ultimate. This tool fully supports the conversion of text and characters in all languages. You won’t find anything missing or broken. Algorithms used to preserve non¬ English content are also applicable to contacts and calendar conversion.
Thanks for sharing such an helpful information but i am using Softaken .Pst converter tool which help to save all my mails database to my local computer and then to thunderbird
Last week, I migrated entire Thunderbird mailbox items into Mailbird. Finally I got a video tutorial, it helps me a lot. I think this video tutorial will helps you for importing Thunderbird/Outlook/Outlook Data File/Thunderbird Email Folders… Simple video but included all topics. Great job! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4MvwKIiwmY
Thank you,
Nayajiv Niwsa
Mailbird does not import emails from Outlook 2016. Instructions for supposedly doing that are provided but they are so high level that they are useless. Further on contacting Mailbird support I got even less help to do this. I have emails in outlook that are up to 15 years old so I use POP accounts so I can back them up on a regular basis and they are not left sitting around on insecure online servers. For me if Mailbird cannot handle this, it is 100% useless for me and not worth the licensing cost.
Hi Mark, thanks so much for reaching out. I am really sorry to hear you are facing some issues with Mailbird. I just spoke to one of our Senior developers and he would like to have a closer look at the issue. Import from Outlook 2016 can be possible but sometimes tricky. Younger versions like Outlook 2019 are not yet supported. If you would like to give it another try, please send an email to cb(at)getmailbird(dot)com and we will make sure to get you in touch with the right person to talk to. Thanks:-)
It worked perfectly for me! Got ’em from Outlook … but here’s my question related to this. In Outlook, my email account was set up as POP3, I’d like to make everything IMAP in Mailbird. So, if I delete the POP3 email address in Mailbird, will it delete all the imported information?
Asking before I try …
Thanks again, love this program so far BIGTIME!
Hi Debbie, thanks for reaching out. Please get in touch with our support team (support(at)getmailbird(dot)com) they will help with you with that and make sure everything works as it should be:-)
I see no option to import archived email from other sources or .eml files. How can I import my archived emails that are not directly associated to an account?
Hello Michael!
At this moment you can import your storage files only if you use POP3 account in Mailbird. Unfortunately it’s not possible on IMAP.
To import your storage folders on POP3 account please go to Settings -> Accounts -> double click your POP3 account
click “import messages”
then select “from external source” -> “folders with eml files” and locate these folders on your PC (possible location: your old email client directory).