Save and Restore Your E-Mail Folders Using Outlook Express

If you use Outlook Express to send and receive your email, then you probably have messages stored on your PC that you don't want to lose. If you want to save and preserve that data, then this article is for you. With a few easy steps, I will guide you through the process of preserving all archived mail and storing it for later retrieval.

Understanding the layout and process.

All messages for Outlook Express are stored in their own directory, and have several files which indicate each folder present that you are using in Outlook Express. There are 5 basic directories that are common: Outbox, Inbox, Sent Items, Drafts, and Deleted Items. If you create any subfolders under Outlook Express in addition to those, you'll see those present as files and directories whenever you look for them. If you create additional folders under any areas like the inbox for example, you will see them show up on the directory listing of Outlook Express folders, along with files linked to those directories. When we are ready to make a backup of the mail folders for Outlook Express, we will need to make sure that we create a backup of ALL the files stored under a mail folder.

The files which hold your email messages and data are called DBX files (they end with a .dbx extension). They are what Outlook Express reads to create your email box as it appears when you run the program. To preserve your email, we will copy these dbx files from where they are to another folder (a new, empty folder on the desktop for example). Once copied, you can import them to another computer from a flash drive or burn them to a CD and copy them back to a new computer to verify that they have been exported and retrieved correctly.

Backing up the files:

Run Outlook Express, click on Tools in the menu bar, and then click on Options.

Another box titled "Options" will appear on the screen. On this box there will be different tabs. One of these tabs will say "Maintenance" on it. Click the tab that says "Maintenance", and the contents of the box will change to reflect the maintenance menu.

On the maintenance area, you will see a button that says "Store Folder". Click on the "Store Folder" button.

A smaller box that says "Store Location" will appear. On this box there is text that says:

"Your personal message store is located in the following folder:"

Just below that text is a box with a unique file path to where your emails are stored with Outlook Express on your computer.

Highlight all of the text in that box, right-click the mouse while it is highlighted, and on the menu that appears select the COPY option (do NOT select cut! Just copy!). You can now click the "x" to close the "Store Location" box.

You now have the directory path stored to the clipboard. Click your START button. Launch the "Run" command, and on the box that appears, place the cursor onto the text box area, right-click your mouse, and select "Paste". When the directory path we copied is pasted to the text area successfully, press the OK button. A Windows Explorer box will launch to the directory where your email files are stored for Outlook Express, and you should now be able to see all the files for them. You should see a .dbx file for each folder that you have in Outlook Express.

Now, all you need to do is highlight all of these files, right-click your mouse, and select COPY (do NOT select cut!!). Go to the new folder we created on the desktop, double click on it, and then PASTE a copy of the files there. Presto. You have officially copied your Outlook Express mail folders, and can burn this new folder with all your email copied to it to a CD, DVD, or save to a usb flash disk. You can use them to import back all your emails and folders at a later date if you ever need to reinstall Outlook Express, or switch to a new computer.

To import your saved data to another computer that has Outlook Express, just start Outlook Express on that computer, insert the CD or flash drive that you saved your dbx files to, and on the top menu where it says "File", select File, and then select the menu option that says "Import". You will be asked where you want to import from. Tell it to grab the files it needs from the CD, flash drive, or other location where you saved it to, and it will restore them exactly as they were on your other computer just before the backup was made.

Congratulations! You've successfully backed up your email!