Help required.. moving emails from Outlook to a Mac

I've moving from a PC to Mac and one of the final things to do is get my email set up...  is there an 'easy' way to move old emails from my various sent and inbox folders in Outlook Express over to Mail on a Mac..?

I have googled it and there seems to be various ideas but has anyone here actually done it successfully..?

Create a GMail account, configure it as IMAP, drap & drop your mail from Outlook (including folder hierarchy) to it in Outlook.  Once that's done, set up the GMail IMAP account on your Mac.  Configure GMail to POP your existing email account, or have email forward to your shiny new GMail one, and you're done.

Don't bother pointing your email account at a web server, ever.

yep - IMAP is the way forward as it synchs mail between any PC/tablet/smartphone you have and is operating system independent.   your mail provider should be able to help you set up your mail service for IMAP if you don't know how to do it.   

Blimey...  i thought I was reasonably competant at these things but I now feel totally lost...  i'm on the mac now..  have moved everything off the pc and it is unplugged..  i exported the entire outlook express email folders as a .pst file and have them backed up...  I do already have a gmail account...   no idea what you mean by IMAP but will have a look at the settings and then come back here and see what to do...

IMAP - Internet Message Access Protocol - basically means that all your e-mail is stored on your providers servers rather than downloaded onto a PC.  that way you can access the mail from any web connected device (PC, tablet, smartphone) and read exactly the same messages on all of them via IMAP.   e.g. if you read a message on one device, it will show as a read message on another - it synchs between the devices.