Outlook to Outlook Express e-mail archive imports

After having successfully re-imported OE e-mail archives into my re-install
of OE, I now feel something of a roll.

On my current PC I have the e-mail archives from my previous PC (both
machines XP, the previous one last patched circa May-June 2005).

I would very much like to get my old Outlook e-mail folders imported into my
current OE application. I have previously looked into this at quite some
length, and the conclusion I often came to from the web, was that you somehow
had to have both Outlook and OE installed on your PC, in order to import
Outlook mail archives (the .pst files) into OE (???).

As it happens a few years back I did have both apps on my PC and the import
failed. It might have been due to the hidden/system folder issue I faced in
the last day or two, I don't know.

Has anyone imported .pst files into OE, and is it a straight forward import?
Or is this thing about needing both the apps on your PC to facilitate the
import true?

Thx!
JW