Convert Lotus Notes NSF to Outlook PST File – Complete Guide

Updated On - March 2, 2024 by Nasir Khan | Reading Time: 6 minutes

In this blog, we learn Step by Step Guide to Convert Lotus Notes NSF to Outlook PST File. If you are searching for solution to migrate Lotus Notes Data to Outlook, you are at right place. Keep reading.

MS Outlook and HCL Lotus Notes are some of the most widely used and most anticipated email clients. These email clients have ruled the market for a while now. IBM Lotus Notes have been used widely since 1989, and along with being an email client, it offers a lot of features like calendaring, scheduling, and programming.

On the other side, MS Outlook offers all the feature bundles to its users in an easy-to-use and straightforward UI. But HCL Lotus Notes is not that easy to use; it is still great encryption on edge. Various users and organizations naturally started migrating and moving from Lotus Notes to Outlook (NSF to PST).

Try Regain NSF to Office 365 Migrator tool to Import Lotus Notes Mailbox data to Office 365 account or Exchange Server. Download Here

Why Convert Lotus Notes mailbox to MS Outlook?

HCL Lotus Notes has been widely used as an email client for several organizations for a long time. It offers unmatched security features with encryption. Since it has stopped support for earlier versions, it is not easy to maintain this email client. To reduce costs because of high maintenance requirements and improve productivity, many organizations are moving to another email client.

Problems with HCL Lotus Notes

• As support for HCL Lotus Notes has been ended in earlier versions, many organizations and users are moving to other email clients to reduce maintenance costs.
• Despite being famous for excellent security, HCL Lotus Notes has lost its accessibility to a great extent. It doesn’t allow any plug-in support or synchronization with third-party email clients.
• HCL Lotus Notes has a lot of learning curves. Only users with excellent technical knowledge can use it. So, beginners don’t have to use this client. So, HCL Lotus Notes is much useless.
• When it comes to supporting, HCL Lotus Notes doesn’t support any tablet or smartphone. So, you cannot access this client remotely.
• In addition, it limits its users to access only one account at a time. You have to log out of your existing account to access another account with details.

Related Post: How to Open NSF Files in Thunderbird?

Why User Switch from Lotus Notes to MS Outlook?

• The main reason people switch to MS Outlook is the low cost of maintenance. Outlook comes under the MS Office suite. So, there is no need to buy it individually.
• It provides unmatched accessibility. You can open it from Mac, PC, and even mobile devices.
• It supports a lot of plug-ins. You can use multiple accounts and connect with several apps simultaneously, such as OneDrive, Skype, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
• Compared to HCL Lotus Notes, MS Outlook is very user-friendly as it comes with automatic email organization for filtering and sorting, and Search Features.
• You can use and access various accounts on Outlook at the same time without entering credentials every time.
• MS Outlook has been designed by considering various needs of beginners and vast expert demographics.

MS Outlook is among the widely used email clients. For HCL Lotus Notes to Outlook migration, you need to perform NSF to PST file conversion. Here, we will discuss two different methods in this article to migrate Lotus Notes to MS Outlook.

Manual Way to Convert Lotus Notes NSF to Outlook PST file

As you know, you cannot access the NSF file using MS Outlook. So, we will first discuss how to do it manually. Even though it doesn’t assure complete migration of Lotus Notes NSF files to PST in original format, you can still go with this option if you want to access only a handful of data.

This manual method needs you to extract data from NSF and save the data in PST format that you can also access through MS Outlook and import the same to Outlook client. In this method, this file in which data is saved would be CSV. There are two steps in the manual process –

Notes: Please don’t forget to backup your NSF file before following the steps mentioned below.

• Exporting data from Lotus Notes and saving it in another file.
• Importing data from separate files in MS Outlook.

Step 1: Exporting data from Lotus Notes and saving in another file

1. Open IBM Lotus Notes email client.
2. Select NSF file which you have to export.
3. Once you select and open file on Lotus Notes, click File on the menu bar and click Export on the drop down menu.
4. Enter file name, location of file, and file type as CSV on Export Wizard.
5. It will show up CSV Export dialog box, here select important options and click the OK button.

Step 2: Importing data from separate file in MS Outlook

1. Open MS Outlook email client
2. Click on File and click Open and Import from drop down menu
3. Once you click Import, it will show up Import and Export Wizard and it will show up different options. Select “Import from another file or program” and “Next”.
4. Choose file type as “Comma Separated Values” and click Next.
5. Click Browse and find CSV file created with Export Wizard in Lotus Notes. Select from the options provided on whether you want to create duplicate entries or not and click Next.
6. Now choose Outlook folder where you want to import data and click Finish.
7. Data saved in CSV file will be imported in MS Outlook.

Now, you can easily access the NSF files data in Outlook. When converting NSF to PST, the manual process can cause many problems. So, let us briefly see what are various problems that arise from this manual solution.

Limitation of Manual Conversion

• Manual NSF to PST conversion allows you to import the email header and not the whole body content
• It is very tedious, complex, and is surely not good for basic users.
• Since the manual process takes a lot of time, it is not good to migrate the whole database in those situations.
• Migrating NSF to PST with a manual process is very difficult, and it should be done with care as an incorrect technique might cause corruption of files.
• CSV format is used as a mediator by manual conversation. Due to this reason, files are imported in raw format. It might not transfer data in original formatting or maintain folders and files hierarchy.
• The manual technique allows a single NSF file for conversion at a time, making the whole process tedious and stressful.
• You cannot perform selective data transfer in this process. You need to transfer the entire file.

Method 2 – By Using Professional Regain NSF to PST Converter

You need a Regain NSF to PST Converter to migrate Lotus Notes to Outlook. But data is stored in HCL Notes in NSF format, and MS Outlook uses PST format in doing the same. So, you can use Regain NSF to PST converter to convert NSF file to Outlook PST format so you can convert the database of whole NSF into PST format smoothly and quickly.

The tool uses an effective algorithm for NSF to PST file conversion even though the NSF file is encrypted. Regain NSF to PST converter doesn’t need any specific technical skill, and it is best for all businesses. You can download this software from here:

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Following are the steps to Export Lotus Notes (NSF) to Outlook PST file:-

1. Open Regain NSF to PST converter.
2. Click on Add file option to choose NSF file to perform conversion.
3. Now, the scanning process start to retrieve Lotus Notes Mailboxes.
4. After Complete Scanning, it will show the preview of Lotus Notes Mailboxes before Saving to another format.
5. select the desired file format from the ‘Save option’ to Save resultant NSF file.
6. Finally you will receive a message as shown in the screenshot below. it means your NSF files are successfully converted into your desired file format.

You can check out all of your converted NSF file data on your system. The software has successfully saved all converted NSF data to the destination you specified in the software during conversion. You can upload this PST file on any version of MS Outlook to access all the data stored in it.

Conclusion

When it comes to migrating the whole database, it is not wise to use the manual method. It makes the entire process very difficult and complex. Regain NSF to PST converter is a complete tool that caters to all specifications of NSF to PST conversion. It keeps the NSF file data intact during import Lotus Notes to Outlook. It is the best tool to perform bulk file conversion and convert data like calendars, emails, journals, contacts, etc., with precision. If you are stuck into any difficulty completing the above steps, please get in touch with us directly. We will help you perform the entire conversion. Thank you for taking the time to read this article.