How to backup your Outlook Express emails in Windows XP
In my experience, emails & address books are the second most valued data on a persons computer after their digital photographs. Whenever one of my customers has a failed hard disk the first thing that the ask me is, “Are my photos OK?” Yes, “Oh great, and what about my emails?”
Unlike photos however, people typically do not backup their emails to CD, flash drive or external hard disk.
Backing up your emails and address book in Outlook Express may be a little overwhelming to basic computer users. If you think that you fall into this category perhaps trying a program such as Backup-Email is a safer option. Backup-Email isn’t free, but its not expensive either (about $25) if you compare it to the cost of data recovery on a hard disk drive (often between $500-$2000) then it is a bargain. Backup-Email can also help you backup Internet Explorer favorites, message filter rules, blocked senders list and signatures with scheduled automatic backups.
NOTE: Outlook Express has been replaced by Windows Mail in Windows Vista. The instructions here only apply to Windows XP.
To backup your Outlook Express emails follow these steps:
- Open My Computer
- Click on Tools > Folder Options
- Click on View tab and select Show hidden files and folders. Press OK. Close My Computer window.
- Open Outlook Express.
- Click on Tools > Options
- Select Maintenance tab and click os Store Folder… button
- Highlight address in box and press Ctrl + C together to copy
- Press OK to all windows and shutdown Outlook Express [It is very important that you shutdown Outlook Express at this point because the data will not copy correctly if it is opened.]
- Click on Start button and then click on Run… icon
- Press Ctrl + V to paste address into Run… box and then press Enter
- A new window should pop up with a variety of files that represent your folders in Outlook Express. These are the files which store all your messages in Outlook Express.
- You can now copy these files to CD, Flash Drive or External Hard Drive. Be sure not to cut these files from this location otherwise next time that you open Outlook Express you will have no old messages.
Now that you know how to backup your emails you have no excuse! So what are you waiting for? Go try it 
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Tagged with: Backup • Email • Microsoft • oe • oe6 • outlook express
Filed under: Email
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Just what I was looking for!
I had a great friend that I communicated with over email quite alot before she passed away!
and the form of rememberance I have to her now are these old emails!
but I had no idea how to back them up!
thanks!
Thanks for the information. I was able to copy to cd, but they are dbx files, and cannot open.
Rusty Crow
Hi,
This method worked like a charm, so easy! Saw many other posts on how to do this, but they were all so clumsy and complicated, thank heavens somebody knew how to do this! Thank you so MUCH, you’re an angel whoever you are!
After struggling for hours with other instructions on the web, I finally found your instructions titled “How to backup your Outlook Express emails in Windows XP”. These were perfectly understandable and although I was tired, I persisted and I was thrilled when it worked perfectly. Your step- by-step instructions were excellent. My emails are safely stored on an external drive and will be transferred to a new computer in a day or two. My heartfelt thanks.
Carol Schroeder
76 years old and still learning
Great, now I have dbx files, which I can’t read. Great help.
Now i have dbx files which i can not read. what is the point of backing them up if i can’t read them!!! this is not helpful at all. I want a way to back them up to be able to read them.
Guys, did you follow the instructions ‘exactly’. Are you using Windows XP?
I’m very sorry if this has caused you an issue, but as you can see other people have used it and it’s worked.
Thing is, it wasn’t really explained that in order to read the messages, you need to transfer them off your CD or whatever storage you used by following the same process, bringing up the command in your run folder, then once all the folders are showing, paste in the ones that you’ve stored. Other than not explaining how to actually access these files once you’ve saved them, these were very good instructions. Hope I’ve been able to shed some light…
To read the messages you backed up, you must copy the foldders back into an outlook express program. Just be sure there aren’t any new emails currently there that you want to keep, because the backed up folders will override the new stuff. To save time, I copied the “run” address as described in the first 10 steps onto my memory stick, so that I can just copy and paste it from now on and don’t need to repeat all those steps each time. To place the backed up files onto your hard-drive, go to that “run” address to get your list of folders up. Now get your memory stick, or wherever you stored the folders, and copy and paste them onto this list of folders. So pretty much just the reverse process of how you got them onto the memory stick. (Instead of copying from the list to the memory stick, you’re now copying from the memory stick back onto the computer.) Hope that helps.
Thanks a million. Had hundreds of emails I wanted to save before I disposed of the old computer and now I’ve managed to copy them all on to a flash drive for posterity!
Your welcome Steve, glad it’s helped you out
Thank you for this service. I also appreciated the easy directions and your expertise! Worked like a charm!
Your welcome, glad it helped you out
THANK YOU! PERFECT! EXCELLENT! WHOPPEE!
I seemed to have copied but when I go to run and Control-V, the box that comes up says You are trying to open this file:
File name:archive.pst
What do you want to do? And it gives me 2 choices
Use FileCure to manager this type of file
Use Windows to manage this type of file
when I chose Use Windows – I get another box asking me what to open it with. I have had no luck in getting the saved files open and I think they did copy as it was doing something for several minutes. Any advice?
HELP! What if I pressed “move to” not “copy to” my flash drive. I don’t see my e-mails there and they are now gone from outlook express! Any advice? Are they gone forever or can I find them somewhere?
You could try holding CTRL and press Z which is ‘undo’ see if that helps
Thanks for your simple instructions. Have saved my emails to disc, and hopefully I can retrieve them in the future if needed.
Thanks, I cannot believe how simple this is after loosing so many emails over the years and just finding this is great.
Thanks
ps is there any way so just include another folder to save to in outlook express.