How to Export Emails from Outlook to Thunderbird

Cases of email migration appears on a daily basis. You may feel the need to change your email client based on many circumstances and modifications. In general, people migrate Outlook mailbox to Thunderbird because their professional organization wants it.

The process of transferring emails from Outlook to Thunderbird becomes difficult because both email services support different file formats. Because emails are the most important part of communication, this conversion must be done carefully. If any individual attributes are compromised then you might face some difficulties and inconvenience when importing Outlook mail to Thunderbird. Let's see how to export emails from Outlook to Thunderbird.

Method to Transfer Emails from Outlook to Thunderbird

There are two methods by which we can easily export emails from Outlook to Thunderbird.

• Manual Method
• Automated Method

With the manual method, you can perform the full migration for free. However, In automated solution you can completely transfer data without any data loss.

Using Manual Method

1. Create new Gmail Account and enable IMAP.

2. Open Outlook and choose File option.

3. Then, click on Add Account.

4. Click on Manual setup or additional server types and press on Next button.

5. Now, go to the Choose Service and select POP or IMAP option, and click on Next button.

6. POP and IMAP for Account Settings, enter the Mail server settings for your account.

   • For Incoming Mail (IMAP) SERVER
     - IMAP SERVER: imap.gmail.com
     - Username: Your Gmail email account
     - Password: Your Gmail email Password
   • For Outgoing Mail (SMTP) SERVER
     - SMTP SERVER: smtp.gmail.com
     - Username: Your Gmail email account
     - Password: Your Gmail email Password

7. Click on More Settings and select “Outgoing server”, and set your My Outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication.

8. Then, set your Advanced setting.

   • INCOMING Server (IMAP): 993, Encrypted Connection: SSL
   • OUTGOING SERVER (SMTP): 587, Encrypted Connection: TLS
     Then, click on OK button.

9. After that, click on Next button.

10. Outlook successfully tests the Account Setting, click on Close button.

11. When you are all set, click on Finish button.

Once your Gmail account is set up in Outlook. To configure the same account in Thunderbird, then follow the steps given below:

1. Open “Thunderbird”, and choose “Local Folder” and click on “Email”.
2. Now, Set Up an Existing Email Account, where you can insert your “Your name”, “Email address”, & “Password”, then click on Continue button.
3. You must have to select IMAP(remote folders), then click on “Done”.
4. Now, your Gmail Account is configured in Thunderbird. Then you can see all your Outlook emails in Thunderbird.

Limitations of Manual Method

• Long Process: Manual Method take a lot of steps to move data from Outlook to Thunderbird. It creates a problem in users busy schedule.
• Time-Consuming Process: At least 2 times we have to synchronized the data. So, its a very complicated and time consuming process.
• Data loss: If you skip any step or perform the method carelessly then their is a chance of data loss permanently.

Using Automated Method

To overcome the limitations of the manual method, users can opt for an automated tool such as SysTools PST to MBOX Converter. It can easily convert PST files to MBOX, thus, it is used for moving emails from Outlook to Thunderbird. It also gives some advanced features to its users like,

• Import ANSI & UNICODE PST file to Thunderbird
• There is no data loss in the entire process
• It Maintain folder structure after the conversion
• It supported Windows 10 and lower versions

Steps to Export Emails from Outlook to Thunderbird

1. Open the tool on your system.
2. Click on the Open button and choose PST file that you want to import into Thunderbird.
3. After conversion, select the location to save the MBOX file.
4. To Maintain the folder hierarchy, choose the additional option.
5. Now, hit on the Export button and the tool starts displaying the count details like current folder, folder count, and email count.
6. Once done, click on OK button.

Wrapping up

In the blog above, we explained different methods for exporting emails from Outlook to Thunderbird. Users can request any solution based on their needs. We talked about two options, the manual and the automated method. Transferring email from Outlook to Thunderbird is more reliable. Therefore, this informative blog greatly helps users migrate data.