Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail, Windows Live Mail, Confusion Ball

By Xah Lee. Date: 2010-05-13

The state of software industry is still quite faaked. Today, i wanted to import Microsoft Mail to Thunderbird. Guess what? Impossible. What a faak is this? Microsoft Mail is the default email program from Windows Vista. A major mail software. Thunderbird is also a major mail software. Thunderbird's import tool provide choices for Outlook and Outlook Express, but no Microsoft Mail? It is rather incredible that Thunderbird can't import it by default.

Searching the web, you'll find that if you want to import, you'll have to use some 3rd party import tool written by some joe. From my experience, that means good luck!

So, i decided to upgraded to Windows Live Mail instead.

The email software and importing business is one confused ball. Here's some clarifications:

[ Outlook Express ] [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlook_Express ] is the bundled free email software on Windows for much of the past 15 years, including Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows XP.
[ Outlook ] [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_Outlook ] is a commercial email program from Microsoft. It is part of a office application suite. It is more of a full featured email program than Outlook Express.
[ Windows Mail ] [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Mail ] is the default free bundled email program for Windows Vista. It replaced Outlook Express.
[ Windows Live Mail ] [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Live_Mail ] is the default free bundled one on Windows 7. It replaced Windows Mail.

Also note, that Windows Mail and Windows Live Mail are pretty much the same software, not rewrite.

Windows Live Mail

Upgrading from Windows Mail and Windows Live Mail (WLM) is pretty easy. You just download the latter. There's no need to import your mail. You simply start WLM and all your old emails there. Nice. (Their email format is the same)

WLM is a absolutely a improvement from Windows Mail. For one thing, it has background spell checking feature. Incorrectly spelled words are highlighted as you type.

For more of my email software experiences, see: History of Email, 2009 .