Linux email clients (thunderbird, evolution, kmail) cannot open Outlook .msg files natively. A solution exists in a Perl script that converts .msg files to .msg.mime files in RFC822 format.

To run in Ubuntu, first install libyaml-perl, then run:

perl -MCPAN -e 'install("Email::Outlook::Message")'
perl -MCPAN -e 'install("Email::LocalDelivery")'
perl -MCPAN -e 'install("Getopt::Long")'
perl -MCPAN -e 'install("Pod::Usage")'
perl -MCPAN -e 'install("File::Basename")'

then download the msgconvert.pl script and run it on each of the .msg files.

Thunderbird then successfully opens them.

References:

• http://wiki.sabayonlinux.org/index.php?title=HOWTO:_Read_Microsoft_Outlook_.MSG_files_in_Linux
• http://www.matijs.net/software/msgconv/