For more information on Outlook Express, visit: http://insideoe.tomsterdam.com/backup/ The Simple Backup Safe but Limited By using this method, you will be able to restore all your mail folders, all your mail and news accounts settings, and your address book for one Identity. You will lose all your subscribed newsgroups, all message rules, all Block Senders entries, all custom views and all custom toolbars. If you use multiple Identities, you must repeat this process for each Identity, or else use the Complete Backup for Advanced Users. Please read the Files & Settings section if you have not already done so. 1. Backup your OE mail and news accounts. Click Tools| Accounts, select the account to backup, then click the Export button. This will store the account's settings in a *.iaf file at the location you specify. You can later import any *.iaf file by clicking the Import button. Your account password is stored in encrypted form in the *.iaf file. Be sure to export all mail and news accounts, and any user-created LDAP accounts you might have created. The default LDAP accounts will always be created fresh when you install or upgrade OE. 2. Backup your address book. Open the Address Book and click Help| About Address Book to see the full path to the current *.wab file used by all your Identities. Find that file in Windows Explorer and copy it to your backup media. You can later import the backup by opening OE and clicking File| Import| Address Book. I recommend that you create an emergency backup of the Address Book as well. Open the Address Book by double-clicking the *.wab file. Click File| Export| Other Address Book, then click on Text File (Comma Separated Values). Click the Export button, specify a destination folder, and click Next. Select all the fields shown for a complete backup, then click Finish. The resulting *.csv file can later be imported using File| Import| Other Address Book| Text File (Comma Separated Values). Note: If you do not see a path to a *.wab, then you have set OE to share the Contacts folder in Outlook98 or Outlook2000, and you should consult the Outlook Help file for instructions on backing up your entire Outlook *.pst file. 3. Backup your mail folders. In OE, click Tools| Options| Maintenance| Store folder to see the path to the folder currently being used for your message store. Open Windows Explorer and navigate to the Store. Copy the Folders.dbx file and all .dbx files to your backup media. It is not necessary to copy any .dbx file because OE will not import newsgroup messages, only messages in mail folders. You must include Folders.dbx in your backup or you will be unable to import the mail folders! To restore your mail folders, open OE and click File| Import| Messages| OE5 (or OE6 if OE5 is not listed)| Message store directory, then browse to the folder containing your old messages. Do not copy the backup files into the current OE message store or the import will fail. If you saved your backup on a CD or a networked drive, you will need to copy the backup to your hard disk and verify that none of the *.dbx files are marked as "read only", or the import will fail. Clone Your Identity (for Advanced Users) This article describes how to backup and restore all items needed to make a perfect clone of your existing configuration. You can use this process for backup purposes, or when upgrading to a new computer, or to clone your configuration on another computer, or to allow multi-boot systems to have a single shared OE Identity. Don't let the length of these instructions put you off trying this method. In practice the entire process takes no more than 5 minutes. In all honesty, you can download shareware utilities that will do exactly what this procedure does, but they will cost you money and almost the same amount of time. • Preparation, 5 steps (optional, but highly recommended) • Backup, 3 steps • Restore, 4 steps • Dual-Booting • Known Problems Preparation Optional, but highly recommended OE does not store all your data in one place, which makes backing up a lot harder than it needs to be. Before you backup, I suggest you create a logical folder structure in Windows Explorer into which you move all your current OE files. This takes only a few minutes to do and only has to be done once. It will make it much easier to maintain regular backups. 1. Decide on a permanent location for your OE files. This location will be saved as part of the backup files, so if you want to move them to another drive, now is the time to do it. In fact if you have more than one hard drive, it is best to create this structure on a non-system drive. You cannot use a network (shared) drive nor a removable drive. If you plan to dual-boot and share OE, use a drive that is visible to all the OS systems you plan to use. 2. Suggested folder structure imageIn Windows Explorer create this folder tree on the drive of your choice. If you use multiple Identities, each must have its own message store folder, so open the Message Store folder and create one sub-folder for each Identity. Then do the same in the Registry keys folder. All Identities share a single address book, so you don't need sub-folders in Address Book. 3. Move your message store to the new Message Store folder. • Open OE and click Tools| Options| Maintenance| Store folder, then click the Change button and Browse to the new Message Store folder. • Close OE, then re-open it. OE will move the store automatically at that time. • If you use multiple Identities, logon as each Identity and move the store to its new location. Remember that you must close and re-open as the same Identity for the store to be moved. 4. Move your address book files to the new Address Book folder. • Open the Address Book and click Help | About Address Book to see the current location of the *.wab file in use. • Close the Address Book and Outlook Express, then find the *.wab file in Windows Explorer. • Copy both the *.wab file and the *.wa~ or *.wab~ file (the automatic backup) to the new Address Book folder. list end nesting level 1 5. Change the path to the address book in the registry List of 1 items nesting level 1 • Open Regedit and navigate to this key: list end nesting level 1 |--HKEY_CURRENT_USER |----Software |-------Microsoft |----------WAB |-------------WAB4 |----------------Wab File Name List of 3 items nesting level 1 • Click Registry | Export Registry File, then save the selected branch to the desktop as Default WAB.reg. That's just a temporary backup file and can be deleted later once this process is complete. • In the right-hand pane in Regedit, double-click on Default then carefully enter the path to the new location and the *.wab file name, such as :\My Outlook Express Identity\Address Book\.wab Do not use quotes around the path. • If editing the registry makes you squeamish, you can use a script to change the address book. Download that to your desktop, then open it in Notepad to read the instructions. list end nesting level 1 list end Backup List of 3 items 1. Export the 4 OE registry keys. From Regedit, export these 4 keys as *.reg files and save them in your Registry keys folder (see Preparation #2): |--HKEY_CURRENT_USER |-----Identities |--HKEY_CURRENT_USER |-----Software |--------Microsoft |-----------Internet Account Manager |--HKEY_CURRENT_USER |-----Software |--------Microsoft |-----------Outlook Express |--HKEY_CURRENT_USER |-----Software |--------Microsoft |-----------WAB |--------------WAB4 You may also choose to use my Backup OE Registry program to automate this step, but only if you are using Win9x, not Windows 2000 or Windows XP. 2. Open Outlook Express and for each Identity, click File |Folder | Compact All Folders. Then close Outlook Express. 3. Copy the store folder, the address book and the registry files to backup media. If you used my suggested folder structure from Preparation #2, this means you only have to copy the top-level My Outlook Express Identity folder since it contains everything you need. This folder can be quite large, especially if you use multiple Identities. You can compress the entire folder into a zip file to reduce the size considerably. list end Restore List of 4 items 1. If needed, restore your OE data files folder (My Outlook Express Identity) to the same location it had when you prepared the backup. If copying from CDROM, make sure the files copied to your hard disk are not set as read-only or OE will not be able to see them. 2. Open Regedit and delete the 4 OE registry keys (see Backup #1 for their names). Do not omit this step! 3. Open your Registry keys folder and double-click all 4 of the *.reg files. 4. Open OE and for each Identity, click Tools | Accounts. Double-click each mail and news account, click the Servers tab, then re-enter the password for the account. list end Dual-booting You can clone your Identity on any version of Windows and restore it to any other version, provided both versions are running OE5.01 or later. Do not try to share OE5.0 with another OS unless it also is running OE5.0. It is best if both Windows versions are running the same version number of OE. If you create your Identity in Windows 2000 or Windows XP, be careful when exporting the 4 registry keys. Both export keys to Unicode text files with the *.reg extension, but those files are not readable by earlier versions of Windows. Therefore when exporting, you must click the Save as Type option and change it to Regedit 4 format. Known Problems Passwords Passwords are stored in the registry in encrypted form, and so they are not included in an exported registry key. You will therefore have to re-enter your mail and news passwords manually. To do so, click Tools| Accounts| Properties| Servers, delete whatever is in the password field, then enter the correct password. Dial-up Connections If you have mail or news accounts that are configured to Always connect using... a specific dial-up connection, you must be certain that your dial-up connections on the restored (or secondary) system have exactly the same names. You can see if any account is so configured in OE by looking under Tools| Accounts. To the right of each account you will see the connection setting. You can change this by clicking on the Properties button for the selected account, then clicking on the Connection tab. Uncheck the box to set the account to Use any available connection. Alternatively, if you are using Win9x (not Win2000 or WinXP) you can also make easy backups of all your dial-up connections. 1. Open My Computer| Dial-Up Networking or Start| Network Connections. 2. Select all your connections and drag them to another folder, such as D:\Data Files\Dialup Connections. For each connection, a new *.DUN file will be created. 3. To restore a connection, simply double-click its *.DUN file. You will have to enter your username and password, as these are not stored in the *.DUN file. Read-only Backup Files If you backup your OE data folder to a CDROM, all the files will be marked as read-only. When you restore those files to your hard disk, you must reset this attribute for all OE files or OE will not be able to use them. Right-click on each file, click Properties and uncheck the Read-only box. You can change all or several at a time by selecting (highlighting) them first by clicking Edit | Select All or by pressing CTRL-A, then right-click on any of the selected files. Alternatively you can open a command prompt at the data folder and simply type attrib *.* -r to change all the files at once. The Partial Backup • Backing up Selected Identity Settings • Restoring Selected Identity Settings • Backing up Selected Mail Folders Single Folder Multiple Folders Backing up Selected Identity Settings Some user settings that are Identity-specific cannot be backed up using the built-in tools in OE. Message Rules, Blocked Senders, Signatures and Custom Views are all stored in the Windows registry, and so must be backed up manually. 1. In Regedit, navigate to this key: |--HKEY_CURRENT_USER |-----Identities |--------{GUID} |-----------Software |--------------Microsoft |-----------------Outlook Express |--------------------5.0 where GUID is the Global Unique IDentifier for your Identity. 2. Under that key, you will find the following sub-keys, among others: |-----------------------Block Senders |-----------------------Rules |-----------------------Signatures 3. In the left-hand pane, click on each sub-key and then click Registry| Export Registry Key, and save the selected branch to your hard disk as type *.reg. Note that the Rules sub-key contains both message rules and custom views. Restoring Selected Identity Settings To restore the keys at a later time, you must first determine the GUID of your new Identity. Do this by opening Regedit and navigating to |--HKEY_CURRENT_USER |-----Identities |--------{GUID} Click on each {GUID} sub-key to see the Username value in the right-hand pane. When you find the correct Identity, right-click on the {GUID} sub-key, click Rename, then press Ctrl-C to copy the name to the clipboard. Now press the ESC key. Do not rename the key! Close Outlook Express, and you are now ready to begin the restore process. 1. For each registry file (*.reg) that you saved in your backup, open the *.reg file in Wordpad and change all occurrences of the old {GUID} with the {GUID} of your current Identity (now you know why I had you copy the {GUID} to the clipboard). Save the edited file, making sure it is still saved as type *.reg and not *.txt. 2. In Regedit, delete the keys you wish to restore, making sure you are deleting the ones below your Identity's {GUID} keys. 3. Double-click the saved *.reg keys. Backing up Selected Mail Folders This section describes two techniques to back up and restore a single mail folder or several at a time. This can be a useful way of creating archived message folders. (For a somewhat simpler approach to OE archives, see this tip). These techniques can also be used to transfer a mail folder from one computer to another, although care must be taken that no existing folder in OE has the same name as the folder being transferred. If you wish to transfer many folders, it is best to use the second technique below. Single Folder Create an Archive Folder 1. Create a new Mail Folder in Outlook Express named Archive. Move the messages you wish to archive into the folder, then close OE. 2. Copy the file Archive.dbx from your store folder onto your backup media. 3. Open OE and delete the file Archive.dbx. Restore an Archive.dbx 1. Create a new Mail Folder in OE named Archive and open the folder at least once! This is required to force OE to create a corresponding Archive.dbx file. 2. Close OE and delete the newly-created Archive.dbx file. 3. Copy the backup of Archive.dbx into the OE store folder. 4. Open OE. Multiple Folders Create an Archive Identity 1. Create a new Identity and import the folders you wish to archive by clicking File| Import| Messages| Microsoft Outlook Express 6, then clicking your Identity. Click Tools| Options| Maintenance| Store folder to locate the store folder of the new archive Identity. 2. Copy the entire store folder to your backup media. 3. You can now delete the OE mail folders from your original Identity. Delete the Archive Identity itself using File| Identities| Manage Identities before you delete its store folder from your hard disk. Restore the Archive 1. If your archive store is on CD or a zip disk, copy it to your hard disk. OE must have write-access in order to import, so be sure none of the *.dbx files in the store are set to read-only. 2. In OE, click File| Import| Messages| Outlook Express| Store root directory, then Browse to the archive store folder. 3. Select to import either All Folders or Selected Folders.