Saving folders from Outlook Express

[Just Gillian]

I'm moving house. I'm keeping the same ISP but, to be on the safe side, I'd like to save my address book, Inbox and Sent folders from Outlook Express to an external hard drive.

I experimented by saving a dbx file of the inbox and sent it as an attachment to my yahoo email address but find I cannot open it.

Can someone please explain, very simply, how I can save the above items?

I have to go and do yet more packing now but I will be back!

[WendyPusey]

This may help with the problem. Dave's not here at the moment so can't ask him.

http://www.abf-soft.com/dbx-file.shtml

Hope the move goes OK.

[Just Gillian]

Thanks Wendy. Had a quick look at the link and will read it properly later today when I have more time to concentrate.

[col48]

There is a trick which I think should get round this.

You have a .dbx file (which has a name of Mum.dbx, say, matching the mail folder in OE called Mum). You have copied this and perhaps the Mum folder has changed and you want to get at emails in the old folder. I'll refer to it in a minute as OldMum.

In OE, rename the Mum folder as NewMum. This will rename the current Mum.dbx file to NewMum.dbx.
Now in OE create a new Mum folder. This will create a small Mum.dbx folder with no emails in it.
Close OE. Replace Mum.dbx with OldMum, making sure it has the name Mum.dbx. You are overwriting an empty email folder with your old Mum folder.

Now open OE and you should be able to see the emails both in what is now Mum (the old Mum folder) and what was recently Mum (the NewMum folder).

[Anne in Carlisle]

I used to be a big Outlook Express fan, Gillian but it was for this very reason I started using the Webmail version of my emails. At least I know they should always be on the server and I can access all my mail and addresses from anywhere, on any computer.

When I started I found the Webmail infuriatingly slow but I've got used to it now and feel happier with my mail on there. If any emails are really important I copy and paste them into a Word document and keep them in an appropriate file.

Anne

[Elaine ..Spain]

I don't use Outlook Express any more, but when I did all I used to do was to backup the store folder.
You can locate the store folder by going to Tools / Options / Maintenance / Store Folder - you should then be able to see where it is currently located.

For ease of backing up I used to have my store folder set as a separate folder in My docs, which meant my emails were backed up each time I backed up my documents.

[Just Gillian]

Thanks for your replies col48, Anne and Elaine. Fortunately, my Outlook Express folders have survived undamaged!

I have a few very elderly genealogy contacts still on my Outlook and didn't want to give them the hassle of changing contact addresses unless absolutely necessary.