How to Copy Thunderbird Mails to Outlook

Background: I have two email accounts that are in two different Exchange Servers. Outlook 2003 allows connection to one account at a time, so I had to waste all my time switching the accounts by restarting Outlook. To overcome this I installed another email client, Mozilla Thunderbird.

About Thunderbird: Thunderbird is a fair alternative but in no way is a replacement to Outlook. There are many things it cant do and I felt handicap while using it due to lack of features. I still had to use it to solve my problem mentioned above.

New Problem: Though I use Thunderbird, I want to copy all the mails to one repository, an Outlook PST. I wanted a ONE store where ALL my mails are stored, so that if I need to search I can look at one location.

Research: Thunderbird stores all the mails as EML files (which is the same format used by Outlook Express) and I tried to import using Outlook, I tried all options, there is no way. I also looked in Thunderbird options as well as add ins, no way. I searched in Google, there are couple of EML to MSG (outlook format) converters but none of them are freeware. I did some more research and found an *indirect* way to solve this problem.

Solution: Here is what I do every weekend to copy my Thunderbird mails to Outlook PST:
1. Open Thunderbird
2. Open Outlook Express
3. Select all the mails in thunderbird and drag them to Outlook Express window.
4. All the mails will be displayed in Outlook Express now.
5. Open Outlook, select File > Import > Internet Mail and addresses > Outlook Express
6. Outlook copies all the mails from outlook express without asking anything!
7. Delete mails in Outlook Express
8. Delete mails in Thunderbird.

This is the easy way I found out and it costs nothing! Please leave a comment if this helps you too!