Migrating Outlook e-mail to a laptop.

albert1 · 17 Oct 2019

I have a couple of Windows 10 Pro Desktops. One I need to install another motherboard and the second one all of sudden after a long time of use stopped recognizing my bios and Windows 10 admin password (which are the same).

I recently purchased a Windows 10 "Home" laptop that I'm using instead until the Windows 10 Desktops can be fixed.

I want to install Outlook via MS Office onto the Windows 10 "Home" laptop, but am uncertain how to migrate Outlook from the Windows 10 Desktop that I'm not able to log in to. The Windows 10 Desktop running an installed Outlook from MS Office 2016.

With past older versions of Outlook and MS Office I use to simply copy the pst file folder to the new PC and then point outlook to the copied pst file and folder.

I may be installing Outlook from MS Office 2010 on the laptop instead of from MS Office 2016 since I have five unused user licenses for MS Office 2010.

So can I just copy outlooks data folder from the Windows 10 Desktop's hard drive (should be able to access via a USB external hd enclosure) to the Windows 10 "Home" Laptop's hard drive? Then load Outlook's e-mail data folder from Outlook 2010 installed on the laptop?

Or do I need to perform some converting of the data folder for versions for Outlook 2016 to version 2010?

Steve C · 18 Oct 2019

Set you mail server options to use IMAP then your emails will be synchronised across all devices.

Try3 · 18 Oct 2019

If you had set up MS Office Outlook to use pop email then you would have a pst file.
If you had set up MS Office Outlook to use imap email or Exchange [email, calendar, ...] then you would have an ost file. You might also have created pst files in addition to the ost.

In all cases, you can just copy a pst file to the new computer - no conversion is necessary for pst files [Office 2007 & onwards].
If you had an ost file then you can simply set the email account up the same way and it will recreate the ost file from the server.

Denis