Hi all,

My wife has a W11 Pro laptop with MS Office Pro 2019. She is using
Outlook for her mail. It is a POP3 account, so all the incoming mail
will be saved in one file.
She will have a new laptop, also with W11 Pro and MS Office Pro 2019. So
I need to transfer the Outlook mail file to her new laptop. But where
can I find this? I've been looking in the programs folders, but I didn't
see it. Anyone has an idea as to where this file is?

Many thanks in advance.
With kind regards,
Fokke Nauta

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.12
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Sun, 3/8/2026 12:51 PM, Fokke Nauta wrote:

Hi all,

My wife has a W11 Pro laptop with MS Office Pro 2019. She is using Outlook for her mail. It is a POP3 account, so all the incoming mail will be saved in one file.
She will have a new laptop, also with W11 Pro and MS Office Pro 2019. So I need to transfer the Outlook mail file to her new laptop. But where can I find this? I've been looking in the programs folders, but I didn't see it. Anyone has an idea as to where this file is?

Many thanks in advance.
With kind regards,
Fokke Nauta

Someone else who has an Outlook, likely know the location precisely.

But generally speaking, C:\Users\Username\AppData is a popular
staging area. The "Roaming" folder should be the highest priority
for user data (contain email messages perhaps), as in a business
environment, Roaming is on a server. The "Local" folder on the
other hand, can have "infrastructure support" for the program.

At the top of C: and in File Explorer, you can try

ext:pst

in the Search box of File Explorer. That might be a marker
for Outlook. At one time file.pst was the kind of
file an Outlook might use.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_file_formats

"PST, OST ? Microsoft Outlook email communication"

While normal win32 EXE programs are in Program Files,
Metro Apps, such as an Outlook.App could be in a
different area, and may be "permission denied" to
people looking in there. There would only be program file
information in such an area, and it would be a poor
place for any data files. The AppData mentioned above,
covers off several possibilities for storage and is the
place to concentrate a search.

There is also C:\ProgramData for storage, but so far I'm not
seeing anything "interesting" in there.

Paul

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.12
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 3/8/2026 9:51 AM, Fokke Nauta wrote:

Hi all,

My wife has a W11 Pro laptop with MS Office Pro 2019. She is using
Outlook for her mail. It is a POP3 account, so all the incoming mail
will be saved in one file.
She will have a new laptop, also with W11 Pro and MS Office Pro 2019. So
I need to transfer the Outlook mail file to her new laptop. But where
can I find this? I've been looking in the programs folders, but I didn't
see it. Anyone has an idea as to where this file is?

Many thanks in advance.
With kind regards,
Fokke Nauta

If setup initially with POP3

The Outlook.pst should be in the userprofile's Documents/Outlook Files
folder.

For a new device, that folder should be created on the device before installing Office with Outlook(stand-alone or M365).
Copy the outlook.pst file to that folder

Then install Office with Outlook and instruct it to use that Outlook

profile(i.e. that *.pst file).

Once Outlook is open, setup the POP3 email account and instruct it to
use that *.pst file instead of creating a unique pst file for the email account.
Note: Once Outlook is installed, one does not have to open Outlook to
create an email account.
Control Panel has a Outlook shortcut call Mail(Microsoft Outlook),
open control panel and run that item and choose the option *Email
accounts* to Setup and email accounts. As noted above when creating
ensure it points to that pst file you copied to the Documents/Outlook
Files folder.

--
...w­¤?ñ?¤

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.12
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Fokke Nauta wrote:

Hi all,

My wife has a W11 Pro laptop with MS Office Pro 2019. She is using
Outlook for her mail. It is a POP3 account, so all the incoming mail
will be saved in one file.
She will have a new laptop, also with W11 Pro and MS Office Pro 2019. So
I need to transfer the Outlook mail file to her new laptop. But where
can I find this? I've been looking in the programs folders, but I didn't
see it. Anyone has an idea as to where this file is?

Open Outlook on the old laptop.

Find the "Export" option and export everything to a .pst file which you choose to save somewhere obvious, using an obvious name - perhaps "Transfer.pst" ?

On the new laptop, open outlook and let its setup complete. Tell it you
don't want an email account.

Copy your "Transfer.pst" to somewhere convenient on the new PC

On the new laptop, tell Outlook to Import everything from "Transfer.pst".


--
Graham J

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.12
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

In article <n15no3Fm5qlU1@mid.individual.net>, fnauta@solfon.nl says...

Hi all,

My wife has a W11 Pro laptop with MS Office Pro 2019. She is using
Outlook for her mail. It is a POP3 account, so all the incoming mail
will be saved in one file.
She will have a new laptop, also with W11 Pro and MS Office Pro 2019. So
I need to transfer the Outlook mail file to her new laptop. But where
can I find this? I've been looking in the programs folders, but I didn't
see it. Anyone has an idea as to where this file is?

Many thanks in advance.
With kind regards,
Fokke Nauta

I Outlook itself, go to the File menu (defaults to "Info" section).
Click the "Account Settings" button - which brings up a window with
details.
Click the "Data Files" tab and you'll see where your file(s) are.

--
--
Phil, London

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.12
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On Mon, 3/9/2026 6:55 AM, Daniel70 wrote:

On 9/03/2026 3:51 am, Fokke Nauta wrote:

Hi all,

My wife has a W11 Pro laptop with MS Office Pro 2019. She is using Outlook for her mail. It is a POP3 account, so all the incoming mail will be saved in one file.
She will have a new laptop, also with W11 Pro and MS Office Pro 2019. So I need to transfer the Outlook mail file to her new laptop. But where can I find this? I've been looking in the programs folders, but I didn't see it. Anyone has an idea as to where this file is?

Many thanks in advance.
With kind regards,
Fokke Nauta

Fokke, just a word of warning ....

I use SeaMonkey Internet Suite for all my 'surfing' and 'mail'. I think the following also applies to Thunderbird.

All my e-mail is downloaded into one single file, my 'Inbox'. If I mark an e-mail for deletion, it stops being shown in my 'Inbox' and starts appearing in my 'Trash' folder .... BUT IS STILL ACTUALLY IN MY INBOX.

It is only when I "Empty Trash" and "Compact Folders" that the e-mails are deleted from the file.

I don't know if MS Office does similar or does actually delete the e-mail when you move it to Trash .... but it could be worth checking! No need to move the unwanted e-mails.

HTH.

Compacting seems to be a theme in a lot of email tools.
Like the "Trash bin" in Windows, for delayed deletion,
it is intended to allow the user to back out of an
accidental deletion situation. It wasn't invented to
be an "extra nuisance" as implied. Like seat belts, it's
there for your own safety.

There are two storage formats for email. The "maildir" format
may consist of a folder full of .eml files. The "MBOX" format
consists of a single file with all the emails listed
sequentially in full form ("Inbox" and "Sent" and "AllMail"
being conceptual examples).

The MBOX is deceptive. A person may think they're looking
at ASCII and that MBOX can be edited with Notepad. Don't
do that. You could damage something in our UTF-8 era. Each
message inside the MBOX is in its "own little world" with regard
to safe editing. The MBOX is even "encoded", in that the
demarcation for a message is "From " <=== line added by tool,
and if your message happens to have "From " in the body, there
is an escape mechanism when the email is stored in MBOX, so that
does not accidentally trigger the MBOX parser (into cutting
the message in half, a loss of synchronization). When your
email tools "Save As" a single message out of MBOX, it is stored
in your Documents as some.eml . And the "From " thing is fixed up.

Whereas a "maildir", at least you are not tempted to make
a giant mess of it with Notepad. Opening a .eml there still
has potential character set issues (code page emails versus
UTF-8 messages).

I don't have any IMAP examples used in real life, but I understand
IMAP may use "maildir" and POP3 may use "MBOX". Thunderbird
made an attempt to implement "maildir" around release 50-60 or so,
and then it you attempted to manually switch between storage
formats, it would switch back to MBOX on its own. On the current
releases, they may actually be closer to having worked all the
issues out of that (so both maildir and MBOX are equally bug free).

Paul


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.12
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 08/03/2026 17:51, Fokke Nauta wrote:

Hi all,

Thanks very much for your help and suggestions. Thanks to you I managed
to transfer Outlook to the new laptop. It all works well!
Once again, all of you thanks very much.

With kind regards,
Fokke Nauta


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.12
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2026-03-09 13:50, Paul wrote:

On Mon, 3/9/2026 6:55 AM, Daniel70 wrote:

On 9/03/2026 3:51 am, Fokke Nauta wrote:

All my e-mail is downloaded into one single file, my 'Inbox'. If I mark an e-mail for deletion, it stops being shown in my 'Inbox' and starts appearing in my 'Trash' folder .... BUT IS STILL ACTUALLY IN MY INBOX.

I understand it is copied to the Trash folder intermediately, but
flagged as deleted in the Inbox.

I don't have any IMAP examples used in real life, but I understand
IMAP may use "maildir" and POP3 may use "MBOX".

Servers like dovecot (Linux) can use either mbox or maildir for either
pop3 or imap. Doesn't matter.

--
Cheers, Carlos.
ES??, EU??;

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.12
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2026-03-10 10:15, Daniel70 wrote:

On 10/03/2026 7:29 am, Carlos E.R. wrote:

On 2026-03-09 13:50, Paul wrote:

On Mon, 3/9/2026 6:55 AM, Daniel70 wrote:

On 9/03/2026 3:51 am, Fokke Nauta wrote:

All my e-mail is downloaded into one single file, my 'Inbox'. If I
mark an e-mail for deletion, it stops being shown in my 'Inbox' and
starts appearing in my 'Trash' folder .... BUT IS STILL ACTUALLY IN
MY INBOX.

I understand it is copied to the Trash folder intermediately, but
flagged as deleted in the Inbox.

No, the 'Deleted' e-mail is still with-in the 'Inbox' File but, because
it is marked for Deletion, it doesn't show in the Inbox but, instead, in your 'Trash' folder.

Get out of SeaMonkey, locate your Profile on your Disk and see how 'Big' your 'Inbox' and 'Trash' folders are.

Now restart SeaMonkey and 'Empty Trash' (which, hopefully, had lots of 'deleted E-mail' in it) and 'Compact Folders' then, again, exit
SeaMonkey and see how big your 'Inbox' and 'Trash' folders are.

Using TB.

I create an email named "test trash". Save it. Move from "drafts" to
"inbox". Then delete it.

I verify that I see "test trash" in the test folder, using TB. Then I go
to a terminal, and check that the file contains that email:

cer@Telcontar:~> grep "test trash" Mail/Trash
Subject: test trash
test trash
cer@Telcontar:~>

See? The deleted file is indeed in the trash Folder before compacting.

cer@Telcontar:~> grep "test trash" /var/spool/mail/cer
cer@Telcontar:~>

And it is not in the inbox. I "undelete" it.

cer@Telcontar:~> grep "test trash" /var/spool/mail/cer
Subject: test trash
test trash
cer@Telcontar:~>

It is back in the inbox. And is gone from the trash folder in the system
file:

cer@Telcontar:~> grep "test trash" Mail/Trash
You have mail in /var/spool/mail/cer
cer@Telcontar:~>


Now I move it to the Drafts Local Folder.

cer@Telcontar:~> grep "test trash"
.thunderbird/zcguwcwo.sequndus/Mail/Local\ Folders/Drafts


It is there, but the output also find this email I am writing now. I
delete the test message.

cer@Telcontar:~> grep "test trash"
.thunderbird/zcguwcwo.sequndus/Mail/Local\ Folders/Trash
Subject: test trash
test trash
cer@Telcontar:~>

See? Copied instantly.





--
Cheers, Carlos.
ES??, EU??;

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.12
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 2026-03-11 10:18, Daniel70 wrote:

On 10/03/2026 11:44 pm, Carlos E.R. wrote:

On 2026-03-10 10:15, Daniel70 wrote:

On 10/03/2026 7:29 am, Carlos E.R. wrote:

On 2026-03-09 13:50, Paul wrote:

On Mon, 3/9/2026 6:55 AM, Daniel70 wrote:

On 9/03/2026 3:51 am, Fokke Nauta wrote:

All my e-mail is downloaded into one single file, my 'Inbox'. If I >>>>>> mark an e-mail for deletion, it stops being shown in my 'Inbox'
and starts appearing in my 'Trash' folder .... BUT IS STILL
ACTUALLY IN MY INBOX.

I understand it is copied to the Trash folder intermediately, but
flagged as deleted in the Inbox.

No, the 'Deleted' e-mail is still with-in the 'Inbox' File but,
because it is marked for Deletion, it doesn't show in the Inbox but,
instead, in your 'Trash' folder.

Get out of SeaMonkey, locate your Profile on your Disk and see how
'Big' your 'Inbox' and 'Trash' folders are.

Now restart SeaMonkey and 'Empty Trash' (which, hopefully, had lots
of 'deleted E-mail' in it) and 'Compact Folders' then, again, exit
SeaMonkey and see how big your 'Inbox' and 'Trash' folders are.

Using TB.

I create an email named "test trash". Save it. Move from "drafts" to
"inbox". Then delete it.

I verify that I see "test trash" in the test folder, using TB. Then I
go to a terminal, and check that the file contains that email:

cer@Telcontar:~> grep "test trash" Mail/Trash
Subject: test trash
ÿÿÿÿ test trash
cer@Telcontar:~>

See? The deleted file is indeed in the trash Folder before compacting.

cer@Telcontar:~> grep "test trash" /var/spool/mail/cer
cer@Telcontar:~>

And it is not in the inbox. I "undelete" it.

cer@Telcontar:~> grep "test trash" /var/spool/mail/cer
Subject: test trash
ÿÿÿÿ test trash
cer@Telcontar:~>

It is back in the inbox. And is gone from the trash folder in the
system file:

cer@Telcontar:~> grep "test trash" Mail/Trash
You have mail in /var/spool/mail/cer
cer@Telcontar:~>


Now I move it to the Drafts Local Folder.

cer@Telcontar:~> grep "test trash" .thunderbird/zcguwcwo.sequndus/
Mail/Local\ Folders/Drafts


It is there, but the output also find this email I am writing now. I
delete the test message.

cer@Telcontar:~> grep "test trash" .thunderbird/zcguwcwo.sequndus/
Mail/Local\ Folders/Trash
Subject: test trash
ÿÿÿÿ test trash
cer@Telcontar:~>

See? Copied instantly.

Well, you've blown me away, Carlos. I have thought for years and years
that the system worked the way I wrote above.

Guess I'll have to pull my head in now!!

Although some of the folders are IMAP folders on the local server. I'll
have to verify what happens when all are handled directly by TB.


--
Cheers, Carlos.
ES??, EU??;

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.12
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

Fokke Nauta wrote on 3/9/2026 10:42 AM:

On 08/03/2026 17:51, Fokke Nauta wrote:

Hi all,

Thanks very much for your help and suggestions. Thanks to you I managed
to transfer Outlook to the new laptop. It all works well!
Once again, all of you thanks very much.

With kind regards,
Fokke Nauta

Care to respond on what method you chose?


--
...w­¤?ñ?¤

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 13/03/2026 08:10, ...w­¤?ñ?¤ wrote:

Fokke Nauta wrote on 3/9/2026 10:42 AM:

On 08/03/2026 17:51, Fokke Nauta wrote:

Hi all,

Thanks very much for your help and suggestions. Thanks to you I
managed to transfer Outlook to the new laptop. It all works well!
Once again, all of you thanks very much.

With kind regards,
Fokke Nauta

Care to respond on what method you chose?

I managed to find the PST mail file on the old laptop. Coud copy it to a stick.
On the new laptop I configured a mail account in Outlook, and found the
PST file as well. I copied the original file in the same directory as
where the new mail file was, and managed in Outlook to import the
original file. Had to reconfigure the Outlook mail settings and
everything was OK. In Outlook I could see all the mail.

Fokke


--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)

On 3/13/2026 5:05 AM, Fokke Nauta wrote:

On 13/03/2026 08:10, ...w­¤?ñ?¤ wrote:

Fokke Nauta wrote on 3/9/2026 10:42 AM:

On 08/03/2026 17:51, Fokke Nauta wrote:

Hi all,

Thanks very much for your help and suggestions. Thanks to you I
managed to transfer Outlook to the new laptop. It all works well!
Once again, all of you thanks very much.

With kind regards,
Fokke Nauta

Care to respond on what method you chose?

I managed to find the PST mail file on the old laptop. Coud copy it to a stick.
On the new laptop I configured a mail account in Outlook, and found the
PST file as well. I copied the original file in the same directory as
where the new mail file was, and managed in Outlook to import the
original file. Had to reconfigure the Outlook mail settings and
everything was OK. In Outlook I could see all the mail.

Fokke

Thanks.
That's more work than I do.
- create the Outlook Files folder on the new device in
userprofile\documents
- copy the previous Outlook.pst to the Outlook Files folder(on the new device)
- Run the cpl applet for Outlook to select the Outlook profile(i.e. Outlook.pst), create a pop3 email account and instruct it to use the Outlook.pst file. (thereafter any other created pop3 accounts are
pointed to the same pst rather than outlook's default to create a unique
pst for each created email account).

--
...w­¤?ñ?¤

--- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
* Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)