Support Start > Email > Setting Up An Email Program > Microsoft Outlook > Microsoft Outlook Express > Moving Messages Between IMAP Accounts with Outlook Express

You may have several different email accounts and want to move messages between them.

For instance, you may have an old account with a lot of messages and are transitioning to a new account. In this case, you might want to move all of the messages from your old Inbox to your new account's Inbox (so that you don't lose them when you delete the old account).

Regardless of the reason, moving messages between accounts is easy in Outlook Express. Just make sure that you've followed the instructions to setup each IMAP account (especially the step to set the IMAP folders). Then you can simply drag messages from one folder and drop them into a different folder.

When you do this, the messages will be moved into the new target folder. However, Outlook Express may still display the messages in the old folder, with a strikeout line through them. This means that they are marked for deletion in the old folder but have not yet actually been deleted. You can delete them by opening the Outlook Express Edit menu and choosing Purge Deleted Messages. (If you do not manually purge the deleted messages, they will be automatically purged the next time you start Outlook Express.) Once a message is purged, it cannot be recovered.