Windows XP Hacks

Back Up and Restore Outlook and Outlook Express Data Files

If email and contact lists are your lifeblood, you need to back them up regularly, but there’s no easy way to do that using Outlook or Outlook Express. This hack tells you how to do it in each program.

There are two ways to back up and restore Outlook and Outlook Express data files: the easy way and the hard way. In the hard way, you manually back up all the data files, which can be a long and laborious process because those files are kept in so many different places. Do it once, and you may not do it again. In the easy way, you get an add-in that does the backup for you.

Backing Up Outlook Manually

If all you want to do is back up your Outlook messages and contacts, then it’s a breeze. Outlook keeps all messages, contacts, and your calendar in a single file that ends in a .pst extension, typically Outlook.pst in the C:\Documents and Settings\<Your Name>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook folder. If it’s not there, you can locate them by right-clicking on the Outlook Today icon in Outlook, choosing Properties → Advanced, and looking in the Filename box. If you archive your old email messages, there will also be a file named Archive.pst in the same folder as your Outlook.pst file. To back up Outlook, just back up these files to a disk or another computer. To restore them, copy them back to their original locations.

If you don’t use Outlook for your contacts, and instead use the Windows Address Book, then ...