[Boatanchors] A Cautionary Tale - another solution

[Mark Shaum]

My solution for migrating mail from an XP machine running Outlook 
Express was to install the Thunderbird mail client, letting it do the 
importing and conversion on the XP machine.  I then installed 
Thunderbird on my Win 7 workstation, and did a quick export of all mail 
data from one Thunderbird machine to the new one.  Address book, folder 
structures and message rules all came across fine. Have installed Win 
8.1 on a new machine but still messing with it. I plan the same 
procedure if I decide to use it as my mail/browser client PC.

I followed the same path with my browser, migrating from IE to Firefox.  
Kept all my favorites, folder structures, etc. intact.

I use a utility from Mozilla called Mozbackup to create a compressed 
file of both my Thunderbird and Firefox files, then upload them as a 
backup as often as I deem necessary to DropBox for offsite storage, 
generally keeping the last two monthly backups.  I have a local copy of 
the most recent backups on a 2nd PC as well, should I lose Internet 
connectivity and need to restore files.  Dropbox offers fairly decent 
storage space for free.  Microsoft SkyDrive offered more space for free 
but imposed limits on individual file sizes, too small to handle the 
files created by Mozbackup.  So SkyDrive is where I store backups of my 
pictures, music files and documents.

73! - Mark K9TR