Inside Outlook Express
Backup and Restore
Do-It-Yourself Backups
If you are the do-it-yourself type, or if you just want to understand a bit more about OE complexities, here are three basic approaches to backing up your Outlook Express files and settings.
- The Simple Backup is only for your email folders and mail and news accounts settings, and it is indeed pretty simple.
- The Complete, or Clone, Backup is for everything in your OE Identity, including email folders, news folders, message rules, blocked senders, even your current view settings. It is very complex to describe, but takes about 2-5 minutes to complete in practice.
- The Partial Backup is for groups of messages, message rules only, blocked senders, etc. I suggest you read through all three sections and then decide which best suits your needs.
For those who choose the Complete (Clone) Backup, it is strongly recommended that you read about the basic structure of OE files and registry settings and the OE Address Book.
OE Backup, free backup utility
Fellow MVP David "Majik" Guess has released a free utility called OE Quick Backup. This will backup everything in OE, including multiple Identities, mail folders, newsgroups, address book and customized Identity settings. In fact, it does just what my Clone Backup does, but much more easily. Or you can back up only selected items, such as rules, much like my Partial Backup procedure, but without having to edit the registry. I've added OE Backup to my Essential OE Tools list. Add it to yours and say goodbye to manual backups.
