If you are changing your operating system, or upgrading to a newer version of outlook express (or outlook) then you will want all your emails transferred to the new system.

Below we show you how to backup your email messages with the least amount of fuss.

Backing up your email messages in Outlook Express

First of all open up the Outlook Express program.

The next thing to do is to locate your mail folder, the easiest way to locate it is to first click on Tools and then select options from the outlook express menu.

You will be presented with a dialogue box similar to that shown in fig 1.1 below.

Click on the maintenance tab (see fig 1.1), and then click on the Store Folder button (as pointed out in fig 1.1).

Now you will see a box similar to that in fig 1.2 below, you can see the path to the location of your message folder (your path may vary from that shown).

We need to know this path in order to backup the message files from that folder, to copy the path simply highlight the text in the box (ensure you highlight all of the text), then hold down the CTRL key and press the C key.

When you have copied the full path, simply click the Cancel button (as we don't want to change anything).

Open up Microsoft Word (or similar) and paste (hold CTRL and press the V key) the location into a document (it might be an idea to print the document containing the path).

Now navigate to the folder using my computer or windows explorer, when you are in the folder you should see some files named inbox, offline, etc, with the .dbx extension, these are the files you need to backup.

So now it is simply a matter of copying the files from the message folder to a backup device such as a CD, other hard drive or other storage media.

To restore your messages again in a new or different outlook express simply copy the message files into the store folder on the new system (the location of which can be found by following the above steps again).