Outlook Express Email Backup

Published: August 26, 2007

If you are like me, you have kept every important email that you have ever sent or received since the beginning of the computer age. I have all my emails sorted in folders by the name of the person and/or business and I religiously file all sent or received emails into their proper folders. By doing this I keep my in box fairly clean and I can find old emails pretty quick when I need to.

At any given time some stupid hacker could infiltrate your system or something else could happen to cause your system to be wiped out. If that happens, you will want a way to keep most of your old emails.

You should consider making a backup of all your emails to a zip file or even burned onto a CD at least once or twice a year. If you do this properly and a tragedy occurs, you can restore your email using your backup.

This will only work if you are using Microsoft Outlook Express.

With Notebook Computers buy what you need when you need it as there will always be newer, cheaper and faster models being released everyday.

Backing up your emails

1. Start Up Outlook Express.
2. Click Tools, Options.
3. Find the Maintenance Tab and then click on Store Folder.
4. A Store location dialog box should appear with the full address to where your emails are being store on your computer. Highlight this address and press the CTRL+C keys or right click copy. Click cancel to close the dialog box.
5. Left click your Start Button and click Run, click into the box that opens up and press CTRL+V and then OK.
6. A window will open up with all your email in it by folder. At the top of the screen Click Edit, Select ALL. Click Edit, Copy, and close the window.
7. Create an empty folder on your desktop by Right Clicking empty space, Left click New then Folder. An empty folder will be created on your desktop that you can rename to EmailBackup or whatever you like.
8. Double click into your new backup folder and right click into the space and then left click paste. Copies of all your email files are now in your backup folder.
9. You can now zip the whole folder and/or burn it to a CD for really safe keeping. I like to add the date of creation to my zip file name (ie: EmailBackup-20070816.zip).

Restore Email from Back Up File

1. Put your unzipped backup folder onto your desktop.
2. Start Outlook Express and then Left click File, Import and then to Messages.
3. In the Select an Email Program to import from box, click Microsoft Outlook Express 5 or Microsoft Outlook Express 6, click on next.
4. Click on the Import mail from an OE5 store directory or the Import mail from an OE5 store directory, and then click ok.
5. Click on Browse and then the mail backup folder on your desktop.
6. Click on OK and then the Next Button.
7. Click on the ALL Folders and then Next and finally Finish.

About the Author
Rich Agnew is an author for The Computer Geek Custom Web Page Design and for CSSZafco.com, distributor of computers and accessories. Please visit the site to view a huge assortment of Computer Technology.