Get Existing Outlook and Folders From One Laptop To Another

I'm trying to help out a friend who just bought a new Windows 10 laptop. His old laptop was also W10 (upgraded from W7), and although his email was from the phone company, he hated the way they had it laid out, so he used Outlook. He had pared his Outlook mail down to a few hundred he wanted to save, and he'd also created many folders in Outlook to easily access emails he's saved to those folders.

Now after setting up his new laptop, going into Outlook, entering his email address and password and letting it configure his Outlook mail, his inbox just keeps loading and loading. We finally killed the task after we saw it go over 5000 emails.

Is there any way to get just what he has on his old laptop to the new laptop?

And while those thousands of emails were populating the inbox of his new Outlook, we noticed that none of the folders he'd created on Outlook on the old laptop were showing up in the new Outlook.

What a MASSIVE pain in the butt!!!!

First of all, the old laptop was accessing Outlook through a shortcut desktop icon. That icon took him to Outlook as a part of MS Office. The new laptop does not have Office (and he can't find the disk). The only Outlook on the new laptop is the one accessed from a link on the upper left hand corner of the msn.com web page. THAT Outlook - and I really don't understand the difference. Maybe someone could explain it to me - brings up his gmail account.

So on his old laptop he'd set up MS Office Outlook to display his email from his ISP. That's the email he wants on his new laptop.

While on his new laptop he set up MSN's Outlook (and AIAS I dunno the difference) to display his gmail. Now he can display his gmail directly on the new laptop - he's okay with that. But I don't know how to get his MS Office Outlook email on his new laptop. His original ISP email has 7000+ emails which he'd reduced to a few hundred on the old laptop's Outlook.

On his old laptop I created a backup PST file by exporting his data to a thumb drive. But Outlook on the new laptop (from msn) doesn't seem to allow me to import anything but favorites and cookies and something else.

So I still don't know what to do....

Just take the pst file from the old computer and put it in the directory he wants to use in the new computer. Replacing the existing pst in its location makes sense (after making a backup copy of the new pst). If outlook doesn't open it automatically, just tell it to open the file (file tab => open and export => open outlook file). If you end up with two outlook files open, go into file => info => account settings => data files tab. Select the desired pst and make it the default. You can delete unwanted files from here. You can also just close the other file from outlook and leave it where it is on the disk.

As far as retreiving the mail with the new outlook, it sees all the mail on the server as new mail and will download it. If he has all the mail he needs in the local pst file, he could delete mail from the server. He could also try moving mail to a folder on the server that mail is not retrieved from if he wants to preserve it there.

This may not be complete, but hopefully gets you closer.

So it sounds like, even though Microsoft is somehow replacing Outlook with Outlook.com, if I want Outlook's emails to show up on another laptop we'd still have to purchase MS Office (since we have no idea where the original CD or product key are)?

Is that right?

boweasel said:

So it sounds like, even though Microsoft is somehow replacing Outlook with Outlook.com, if I want Outlook's emails to show up on another laptop we'd still have to purchase MS Office (since we have no idea where the original CD or product key are)?

Is that right?

That may be what you will have to do. You could check with MS to see if anything was registered with them for the existing installation of outlook/office but, short of that, without the product key, no way to authenticate it with MS. Although, there should be a way to get the product key from the installed version. Help => about or somewhere in the options. I have Office 2016, so it is a different system now and can't look to see on my installation.

Try here: Find your Office product key - Office Support

I remember reading some time ago that the Outlook component of MS Office was going to be free. Vaguely recalling that, I told my friend that I could get his MS Outlook onto the new laptop.

Days later I've decided not to spend another hour (beyond the several that I've already wasted) simply to do a favor for someone who's done nothing for me beyond drink my beer. I'm sorry that I apparently misread the original article, sorry that the hours I've already spent on this yielded nothing, sorry that Microsoft care very little for anything but the almighty dollar, and sorry for wasting anyone's time here.

He has access to his ISP's email account on the new laptop. He'll just have to delete again the thousands he'd already deleted on Outlook. And he'll have to live without those folders that he'd set up on MS Outlook. I'm done jumping through Micro$oft hoops.