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OUTLOOK EXPRESS BACKUPS - ADDRESS BOOK AND MESSAGES

Backing up your address book

  Think about how important your email addressbook is. It may have taken years to collect those addresses, and you may have no other contact information for some of the people.
  If your hard drive fails or your computer is stolen, all that information is gone. Not only are you faced with a lot of work to rebuild the address book, it might be impossible to track down some of those addresses again.

  Fortunately, you can easily back up your address book, and if something goes wrong that data can be restored quickly.

  To back up an address book in Outlook Express, search your computer for the .wab file(s) and copy to another drive, such as CD or flash drive.

  If there isn't a .wab file:

  • click File | Export | Address Book
  • select Text File (Comma Separated Values), click Export
  • name the file and select a location, click Next
  • select the fields you wish to back up, click Finish
  With this method you'll be able to restore addresses, but not the structure of the addressbook.

  A word of warning - if you save the file on your hard drive, it's still better than no backup at all. But if your hard drive fails, the backup is lost too. Therefore, it's wise to back up to a CD or other drive and keep them in a separate location.

  Get into a routine of regular backups, depending on how frequently your address book changes.   If you ever need to rescue your address book, copy the .wab file from the backup to the appropriate location on the new drive, or click File | Import for exported .csv files.

Backing up your messages
Search your hard drive for *.dbx files: there should be one for each folder. Copy to backup media in case you someday need to restore your messages in the event of catastrophe.

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