In a digital world, which thing
is excessively used for communication purpose? If your answer is email, then
you are absolutely right. Email plays an important role for communication
between individuals and organizations. Nobody can deny the fact that emails
have a great importance in modern business communication. And just because of
this, email client applications are highly popular among computer users. In
this post, we will discuss about the two popular email clients provided by IBM
Notes and Microsoft.
IBM Notes (Lotus Notes)
IBM Notes (which was formerly
known as Lotus Notes) is a client software application provided by IBM. This client
software is primarily used to perform business collaboration functions which
include email, calendars, contacts management, instant messaging, to-do lists,
and many other functions as well. Lotus Notes creates a database file which
stores data in document units called notes, and the file is saved in NSF
or Notes Storage Facility format. The entire business collaborative
business information such as emails, calendars, etc. is stored in NSF database
file.
MS Outlook
Generally Outlook is known as an
email client application provided by Microsoft in Office suite as well as a
separate application. But in reality, it’s not just only an email client
application. In fact it’s a personal information manager that provides users a
wide range of features such as: emails, contact management, calendar, task
management, journal creation and many more including web browsing. To store the
entire mailbox content, Outlook creates an Outlook data file which is called PST
or personal storage table on a local system.
Now let’s talk about a scenario
in which you need to migrate from Lotus Notes to Outlook. Think you were
previously using IBM Notes. But now you have switched to a new organization where
you need to use Microsoft Outlook. This situation becomes challenging for you
as your old emails and other business data are saved into an NSF database which
is not supported by Outlook. Now the challenge is how to export mailbox data
from Lotus Notes to Outlook.
You have two options for this:
first is to export your NSF file’s data to Outlook using IBM Notes’ export
feature. Second is to convert NSF to PST format using a professional NSF to PST
Converter tool.
Manual Procedure
If you are planning to use the
manual procedure, first you need to export your data to a format which is
supported by MS Outlook, such as: Comma Separated Value or Structured
Text. To know how to do that, read the steps given below:
Step 1: Launch IBM Notes
client on your system, and open the NSF
database.
Step 2: Go to the Menu
bar, click File tab >Export… in the options.
Step 3: The Export
wizard will be opened. Browse a location in the system directory for new file.
Click the drop down arrow next to Save as type option and either
select Comma Separated Value or Structured Text. Then click Export.
This is the part of this manual
procedure. As you have successfully exported your NSF file’s data into a new
file of either Comma Separated Value or Structured Text, now you can import
this file to Outlook. To know how to do that, read the steps given below:
Step 1:Launch Microsoft
Outlook client on your system.
Step 2:Go to the Menu
bar, click File tab >Open>Import.
Step 3:The Import and Export Wizard will be
opened. Select Import from another program or file in the options and click Next.
Step 4:In the Import a File wizard, select Comma
Separated Value (Windows) in the options and click Next.
Step 5:Now select the file you want to import to Outlook. Click Browse and select the file. You may
also check other options as well before clicking Next.
Step 6:Select a destination folder in which you want to import the
CSV file. Click Next.
Step 7: The importing process will be started. Once it will be
successfully completed, click Finish.
Professional Software
There is also a professional way
to migrate from IBM Notes to MS Outlook by converting NSF files into PST
format. Download free demo version of NSF to PST Converter software that
will help you convert your NSF database files into PST format, so you can
access your old emails and other data in Outlook client. If you evaluate the
software using its demo version, you can only export first 25 email items of
each mailbox folder of selected NSF database file. This is the only limitation
in demo version. You need to purchase the licensed version of this tool to
avail full-featured software. It supports all major versions of IBM Lotus Notes
as well as it is highly compatible with all Windows operating systems.