Transfer emails from local Mac Mail App. to Outlook via Exchange or IMAP server

When I got MBP(Mac Book Pro) and decided to use it for work, my hope is to use all native applications including Mail App, even though there is little support from company IT team. I have used for several months although there were some compatibility issues with web mail and MS Outlook users, especially with attachments. But finally, I gave up and decided to go back to MS outlook which runs on Parallels7.

Now, new problem occurred. How can local emails managed by Mac Mail App moved to MS outlook? When I googled solutions, main stream was to export emails to one format, to convert another format and finally to import by MS outlook. It seems there are too many steps, not familiar programs and user engagement.

After some study, I found a very easy, simple, and intuitive way. As the title has already revealed, Exchange or IMAP server can be a relay for this task. But when I tried there are some point which should be taken care of. So I summarize step by step guide as below.


1. do Exchange or IMAP account setting at both Mac Mail and MS Outlook.
    Mail boxes or Folders of the mail server appear at the left side of both mail clients.
2. Set MS Outlook Offline.
    Warning : If it is online, all transferred emails will be duplicated.
3. Copy or Move some emails at local folders of Mac Mail to a folder in the server area.

   There is no progress bar. You can see circling mark only. The progress can be checked by see network traffic at the activity monitor.

    Warning : Check how may emails can be uploaded at once, due to server capacity limitation.If the server becomes full, it will be hard to manage, especially in case of Copy. I cannot find to measure the size of emails which is select. Only it can be automatically counted.

4. Now your emails are back to the mail server and can be downloaded or synchronized to other mail clients.

5. Set Mac Mail App. Offline

6. Set MS Outlook Online.

7. MS Outlook will automatically synchronize and download the renewed emails.

8. The mail server can be emptied by moving the downloaded files to local archive area (another pst files)

   If there is no local pst file is opened, you can open it or create new one.

9. go to step 2 and repeat the process until all local emails at Mac Mail are transferred. 

I prefer to use company exchange server for it is faster than cloud mail servers.

But, if this is not the case, Gmail and iCloud mail can be a good candidates.

Gmail provides around 7 GB and iCloud gives 5 GB.