Outlook folders empty after IMAP to Exchange migration

Cause

When a mail service is changed from an IMAP (Internet Mail Access Protocol), the restored email folders have a IPF.Imap tag attached. Outlook is not able to deal with unrecognised forms of IPF.Imap and shows the folders up as empty.

What programs are affected by this?

This issue affects nearly all versions of Outlook. However, webmail is not affected and may be used.

Resolution

A 3rd party program called MFCMAPI needs to be downloaded and run.

MFCMAPI is available on Github and may be downloaded from here. Download the 32 bit or the 64 bit version depending on which version of Outlook is installed on your computer. It will usually be teh 64 bit version for most modern installations of Outlook.

When downloaded, MFCMAPI will be in a compressed file. Uncompress it and run it.

1. On the ‘Tools‘ menu, select ‘Options‘.
2. Select the ‘Use the MDB_ONLINE flag when calling OpenMsgStore‘ checkbox and the ‘Use the MAPI_NO_CACHE flag‘ when calling OpenEntry check box.
3. On the ‘Session‘ menu, select ‘Logon‘.
4. Select the Outlook profile for the mailbox.
5. Open the appropriate mailbox.
6. Expand the ‘Root‘ container and then expand ‘Top of Information Store‘, and then locate the missing folder.
7. Select the appropriate folder to view the properties.
8. Double-click the property that contains the tag value ‘0x3613001E‘.
9. Change the value from ‘IPF.Imap‘ to the appropriate class. (For example, change the value to ‘IPF.Note‘ for an email folder.)
10. This needs to be repeated for all folders – even subfolders
11. Exit MFCMAPI.