Migrate your mail from Outlook

摘要

A major concern of anyone currently using Windows and thinking about moving to Linux is compatibility with existing data. As regular readers know, on the whole there is no real problem: most file formats are standard and independent of the operating system. The big exception is data created using applications from Microsoft. Ninety per cent of the time these are in a proprietary format that isn't simple to migrate. Fortunately, many of these formats, including Word's '.doc', can be read by Linux and Unix applications, and can be either converted into an open, standard format, or rewritten to the original proprietary one. David Bullon, from Bedford, has asked a question along these lines. He currently uses Microsoft Office for most of his work, and Microsoft Outlook for email. Now, with Open Office, the former is no problem in terms of compatibility. The latter isn't such an easy matter, though. He asks if it's possible to migrate his several years worth of email to a Linux system.