E-mail and MS Outlook Related Pages

Managing E-Mail Retention Settings Sorting Incoming E-Mail Messages How To: Backup Your Outlook Express Data File I'd Like to Recall That E-mail! How To: Use Outlook to Read Your G-Mail Is it Spam or my long lost Cousin? How to view an email source

Backup Outlook Express

Unlike Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express does not come with a backup utility specifically to support that program. However, you can use typical file backup practices to enable you to do this. The heart of Microsoft Outlook data storage is the Personal Storage Table (.pst) file, it is where the messages, calendar and other data items are stored on the computer.




First you need to find where your .pst file is located.
In Outlook Express go to Tools, then Options, click on the Maintenance tab.
Store Folder.. is where you will find it.

Please Note: because of the size of the window you cannot see the whole file name.
Open Notepad, highlight the folder location in the Store Location window. Copy and Paste that into Notepad. You will now see the entire file path.

Use backup software, in the screenshot below I show NTI Shadow, the software that Netgear supplied with my ReadyNAS DUO (Network Attached Storage) device. It is typical for the supplier to provide such sotware with some of the larger USB storage devices as well. Here I show creating a backup job specifically for the .pst file. Schedule the job to run at least weekly.

This will be a full backup of your file store, if your computer ever crashes you can copy this file back to the local location.

A word of caution, do not use this process to implement an upgrade. Due to file formatting 2003 and 2007 versions are compatible, earlier versions are not compatible with them.