Working Download Link For The Elusive gExodus Gmail Import Tool
Everton | Aug 26, 2005 | Comments
After spending ages trying to find a working download link for gExodus which imports your old emails into GMail, and failing, I finally got someone who blogged about gExodus to email me the app.
Given that I’m certain that there are no other working links at the moment, I’ve created one here as I’m sure there are other people who would want to use this tool. I’m not hosting the file on this blog as I’m already way over my bandwidth allowance (the nice people at Blogware who are letting me have this blog for free haven’t told me off yet).
To use the tool you need to do the following:
- gExodus works with Mbox files, so if you are using Outlook or Outlook Express you need to convert your files to the Mbox format, which Thunderbird uses as a default:
- Outlook users: Download and install PST Reader. This will convert the Outlook messages database (with extension .pst) to the Mbox format. You can also use Thunderbird to import your account and convert it to Mbox. Your messages database can be found usually be found at C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\. If you can’t find it, do a search for outlook.pst.
- Outlook Express users: A different database format is used to Outlook ending in .dbx. To convert your
messages to Mbox use DBXConv. In order to find where your .dbx files are stored, open Outlook Express, then click on Tools -> Options, and then on the
Maintenance tab. Next, click on the Store Folder button, and you will see the full path. Please note that DBXConv is a command line utility. The best thing to do is copy your .dbx file into the folder where DBXConv is located, and drag and drop it into DBXConv. Your Hotmail database will be called something like Hotmail -Inbox.dbx. - Thunderbird Users: Thunderbird stores messages in the Profile Folder, in the ‘Mail’ and (if you use IMAP) ‘ImapMail’ folders. Each mail folder (Inbox, Sent, etc.) is stored as two files — one with no extension (e.g. INBOX), which is the mail file itself (in “mbox” format), and one with an .msf extension (e.g. INBOX.msf), which is the index (Mail Summary File) to the mail file.
(ii) Once you have located or created your Mbox file then run gExodus. Fill in all the necessary information, such as your username, and the path of your Mbox file. DO NOT ADD A LABEL – I found that this messes up the import. Then click on ‘Import into Gmail’ and away you go! Be patient – it’s not the fastest process.
Remember that each folder of your mailbox is in a seperate Mbox file so you will have to import each folder individually.
Within Gmail the emails are imported as unread and unfortunately, with the wrong date stamp. However, this isn’t a big issue and just create a filter to archive or to give them a label, say ‘imported email’.
Read Related Posts
Filed Under: Internet News
About the Author: Everton is based in London and has worked in the internet and mobile space for over ten years now, and before that worked in corporate strategy and consulting. He has a degree in Economics from Cambridge University.He also writes for Windows 7 News, Windows 8 News and One Tip A Day.
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
- Anonymous
- Milan
- Pragmatopian
- how to extract dbx files
- mutu26
- read dbx files




