Hey Tony,

To completely transfer your OE mail to Windows Mail you should not only
transfer your messages but your account information and rules along with
your address book.  This isn't a comprehensive "Move OE to your new Vista
computer" article but, I have included instructions on how to move your
accounts and rules over from OE to WM in addition to the link to the website
that is included that walks you through migrating your actual mail.

See the website:

http://www.oehelp.com/backup.aspx

This site gives great information on moving your data stores from OE on one
machine to WM on another and is what I used to begin my e-mail migration
from my old computer to my new one.

A word of warning though, ** if you have your account set to leave mail on
your mail server for a period of time ** after you get your accounts setup
and all of your mail has been imported you will end up downloading duplicate
messages for all the items you have out on your mail server.  So, if you
leave copies of your messages on the mail server for 10 days you will
receive duplicate messages for everything you have gotten in the last 10
days.  To prevent this you can turn this off in OE6 under
Tools>Accounts>Mail>"Account Name">Properties>Advanced>Delivery and then
perform a send and receive.  If you have web-mail with your ISP use that to
verify that there are no messages left on your mail server.  I wasn't
thinking when I did my move and had to delete about 120 messages.  You'll
want to verify that the duplicates are gone as I cannot easily test
performing the send and receive will get rid of the messages on your server.

Also, make your life a bit easier and export your account settings to .iaf
files from OE and import those into WM.  You can find the button to export
under Tools>Accounts>Mail.  You can import these account settings files into
WM in the same location in WM.  Go to Tools>Accounts>Mail and import the
files from the location you saved them to.  This will save you some time in
futzing around with configuring your e-mail settings.  It's also not a bad
idea to export these and store them someplace safe so that in the event your
computer crashes you can bring your account settings back quickly.

As for inbox rules, luckily the registry format for rules is identical so
you can, with a little text editing, import your rules as well.  Granted to
make this worthwhile you need to have enough rules that would warrant going
through the following process.  I had about twenty so recreating all my
rules from scratch wasn't, in my opinion, a good use of my time.  I would
recommend you perform the following after you have imported your mail and
you address book.

To import your rules:

1.  Find out what identity you're using:

a.  In OE go to Tools>Options>Maintenance and click on the "Store Folder"
button.

b.  In the store folder button you will see a number enclosed in curly
braces.  ex.

            {F67B35AC-B631-46C8-88AA-6EFC5B2933A9}

         This is your identity number.  I'll reference it further as
<identity>

2.  Export your rules:

a.  Open regedit.exe

b.  In regedit, navigate to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities\<identity>\Software\Microsoft\Outlook
Express\5.0\Rules

(you may see "6.0\Rules", it's 5.0 on my computer and I'll reference 5.0
from here on)

c.  Right-click on "Mail" and select "Export"

d.  Give it a name you can remember in a place on your computer you can find
and click "Save".

3.  Edit your rules to import on your new computer:

a.  Make a copy of the file you just saved and name it <whatever your file
was called>_Import.

ex.  If your computer is setup to show extensions you will see
"MyMailRules.reg" rename this file to "MyMailRules_Import.reg"

if you don't see extensions you will only see "MyMailRules" and once renamed
"MyMailRules_Import"

b.  Right-click on your new file (the one named ..._Import) and select
"Edit"

c.  In Notepad select "Edit>Replace"

d.  In the 'Replace' dialogue copy and paste the line up to 5.0 from the
first line of your ..._Import file:

ex.   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities\<identity>\Software\Microsoft\Outlook
Express\5.0

into the "Find What" field.

e.  Then paste the following line exactly as it's shown:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows Mail into the "Replace With"
field.

f.  In the replace dialogue, click on "Replace All"

g.  Save your file.

4.  Import the rules on your new computer:

a.  Copy the ..._Import.reg file to your new computer

b.  Double-click the file and when asked, "Are you sure..." answer yes.

5.  Fix the Imported rules:

Because rules can reference specific locations in the mail folder structure
within OE some of your rules may be pointing to locations that don't
technically exist anymore.  The same can hold true for rules that referenced
contacts, since you have moved to a new computer the contacts may be seen as
completely new.  However, the structure of the rules is intact so, you just
need to repoint to rules the folders or contacts you want them to work with.
Modify each rule to match your requirements and you should be golden.