Switching to Outlook/Entourage for IMAP or Exchange email

If you switch to Outlook or Entourage as your only email client, plan to move your email and personal settings.

Switching to Outlook or Entourage?

If you switch from your current email client to Outlook or Entourage for email, you should plan to move your email and personal settings from your current client to Outlook or Entourage. This applies any time you switch to Outlook or Entourage—regardless of whether you configure Outlook for IMAP or Exchange email.

Talk to Your Technical Support

The first thing you should do is discuss your needs with your department's technical support staff. Your technical support staff may already have plans for migrating email and other data from your current email client to Outlook or Entourage.

Move Your Email

Depending on how you plan to use Outlook or Entourage, you may need to move your email.

IMAP Email - If you continue using IMAP, you won't have much email to move since you will continue to access the same mail server, mail.ilstu.edu. You will need to move email that's stored locally by your current client, though. For example, Sent Mail is stored on the local computer by some email clients.
Exchange Email - If you switch to Exchange for email, you need to forward your email to Exchange; go to http://www.ilstu.edu/ulid and click on ULID Email Forwarding. You also need to move all of your email to the Exchange server. The easiest way to do this is to set up Outlook or Entourage with two accounts—one set up as IMAP and the other set up as Exchange. Then just copy (drag and drop) your IMAP mailboxes into your Exchange account.
Check Your Email Quota - Before you move any email to Exchange, you should check your email quota. Go to http://www.ilstu.edu/ulid and click on Email Quota. Log in to see how much disk space you are using for email. If you have more than 500MB of email, you should request an email quota increase before moving any mail to Exchange. To request a quota increase, go to http://www.helpdesk.ilstu.edu/requests/ and click on Other Exchange Requests. In the comments box, specify your current email disk usage and request an email quota increase.

Move Your Address Book

If you have an address book in your current email client, you may want it to be available in Outlook or Entourage. The steps for doing this differ from one application to another, but the basics are the same.

Export your address book from your current email client.
Import your address book into Outlook or Entourage.
Verify the import process was successful.

The last step, verify success, is important. Outlook or Entourage may report that the process was successful, but you won't know for sure until you see for yourself. If the import was unsuccessful (or only partially successful), you may be able to delete the bad contacts and try again.

Move or Recreate Filters, Signatures, Stationary, etc.

In addition to email, you may want to move personal settings like filters, signatures, stationary, etc. from your current client to Outlook or Entourage. While it might be possible to move these settings to Outlook or Entourage, it may just be easier to recreate them. Make notes of your current filters, signatures, and stationary and recreate them in Outlook or Entourage before your current email client is uninstalled from your computer.

Article Information

Article ID: 1269
Last Review: Jul 24, 2008
Type: Article