How To Move content to an Outlook.com EAS account

Karl Timmermans | 2014-12-08

Configuring the same email account multiple times in the same Outlook profile using different protocols (i.e. POP3, IMAP, EAS etc) is not something that would be considered but it can be done and in one case in particular provides the solution on how to move data into an Outlook.com EAS account configured in Outlook ‘2013 when people want to move from a POP3 to an Outlook.com EAS account and move all their email data to the Outlook.com folders. The EAS protocol does not allow you to simply move email data from a POP3 folder to an Outloook.com folder. If you try, you’ll encounter

You also cannot import email or contact data directly into EAS based Outlook.com folders. if you try, you’ll encounter this error message

(there are no issues moving/importing data into Outlook.com MAPI accounts configured via the Outlook Hotmail Connector in Outlook ‘2010 or earlier)

Moving Email Data

This is a multi-step process

temporarily configure the same Outlook.com account in the same Outlook profile as an Imap account resulting in the same account being configured twice in the profile.
*** strongly recommended to set the IMAP Outlook.com account to <manually> Send/Receive so that the two accounts do not continuously and simultaneously “sync”. When all the copying is done – then do a manual S/R on the IMAP account so that the data gets sync’d to the server
Add the PST file that contains the email data you want to move. If you already have the POP3 account configured in the profile, the PST file will already exist in the profile otherwise open the file separately. (You cannot open an OST file on its own)
Outlook ‘2013

File –> Open & Export –> Open Outlook Data File

Outlook ‘2010

File –> Open –> Open Outlook Data File

Outlook ‘2007

File –> Open –> Outlook Data File

Note: you can also add a stand-alone PST file using the Control Panel Mail app via the Data Files tab. Doesn’t matter which approach is used, the PST file ends up being added to and accessible in the Outlook profile.
Once the PST file is accessible in the profile, moving email data from a PST folder to the Outlook.com EAS folder. it’s simply a matter of moving the items from one folder to the desired folder in the IMAP configured account. If you have email filed in POP3 folders you have created, then you will need to replicated those same folders in the IMAP account (or can also be done in the EAS account but you’ll need to sync the Imap account so that those appear in the folder tree).

Copying/moving the data is a simple 5 step process

open the email folder in the POP PST file you want to move
Use Ctrl-A to highlight all the item
right-click on the highlighted items
select <Move>
then select either “Other Folder” (if you want to <Move> the items or “Copy Folder” to copy the items leaving the original folder in tact (moving items deletes items from the source after being moved to the destination

Copying would be a better choice since you will always have a backup of the original information.

Once the data has been moved to the required IMAP folders, make sure that the account is sync’d and all the data appears in the EAS based folders. Once the sync process has been completed and all the items appear in the EAS folder(s), you can remove the IMAP account from the profile via

File –> Account Settings –> Email tab –> highlight the IMAP Account –> click on <Remove>

Moving Contact/Calendar Data

The process is identical to that used to move/copy email data with the only difference being that this does not involve the use of the IMAP account (Imap accounts do not support contact/calendar data). The target folder would be the one contained in the EAS folder tree.