How to Import Windows Mail (.eml) to Mac (.mbx)

When you are migrating your computer system from Windows PC to Mac, one of the things that would be a hassle is the transfer of emails stored in your PC to Mac. This situation will arise when you set your email client to store all your email locally, especially for POP3 mail server. Email transfer can be done as easily as copying a file, but opening the email file… well, it’s not that simple.

Office emails are normally handled in Outlook on Windows Live Mail, while for Mac, you have a different email system by Apple, that caters to a different email format. If you happen to use Thunderbird as the client for your office emails on your Windows PC, then this migration is simple as Thunderbird offers the same application for Mac, but if you are on Windows Live Mail, you will need to change the file format so it can be read on your Mac. If you happen to use IMAP mail server, then this wouldn’t be much a problem since you can sync emails from the server (IMAP stores all email in server so you can access from anywhere).

In this quick guide, we will share how you can import Windows Email with .eml extension and open it in your Mac Mail. We will get this done with Eml2Mbx, a simple application that will duplicate eml file and change it to mbx file.

Import Windows Mail to Mac

Before you can import all email files from your Windows Live Mail, first you need to download Eml2Mbx from the official download site. Scroll down, look for ‘Eml to Mbx’ and download.

Once the files are downloaded, unzip the folder to anywhere that’s easy for access, and click open the file ‘Eml2Mbx’.

Before you can convert your files, you need to first export your email files. If you have already exported your Windows Email file to a folder in .eml format, start with Step 2 below.

1. Export Windows email

To export your email, open your Windows Email application, click on the ‘File’ button, go to ‘Export email’ and select ‘Email messages’.

Select ‘Microsoft Windows Live Mail’ and click ‘Next’.

Select the folder you want to save your email files to, and click ‘Next’. The folder must be an empty folder.

Now select the email folder you want to export, click ‘Next’ and you are done.

Your emails are now saved in the folder you selected earlier, with .eml extension.

2. Converting Email Extension .eml to .mbx

To convert .eml email format to .mbox so you can read them on your Mac, open the Eml2Mbx application you have downloaded earlier, look for the folder where you saved the email files. Then select the email file you want to convert and click ‘Open’.

Once you clicked on the ‘Open’ button, the file will be duplicated automatically, but with .mbx extension.

The Eml2Mbx.exe file can only convert 1 file at a time so this task is time-consuming, but you can convert emails in batches too.

To do this, open the Eml2Mbx folder you downloaded earlier, copy two files ‘batchconvert‘ and ‘eml2mbx.exe‘, and paste them in the saved email directory.

With the two files included in the same email folder, click to run the ‘batchconvert‘ file, and all your emails in the folder will be converted to .mbx format.

3. Import Windows Email To Mac

Now that you already have email files saved in .mbx extension, copy and transfer these files to your Mac as you get ready to import.

Open your Mac Mail client, go to ‘File’ and select ‘Import Mailboxes’.

Select the file type you want to import, in this case, select ‘Files in mbox format’ and click ‘Continue’.

Select all the email files (in .mbx format) that you want to import and click ‘Choose’.

Now your emails will be imported to your Mac Mail client, and you can access these emails from the new folder created with the name ‘Import’ on the left sidebar.

Conclusion

The process may look long, but it’s worth the effort to keep your email saved in your records even if you are changing your computer system.