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How do I move my Outlook Express folders to my new machine?

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Summary: Moving Outlook Express folders from one machine to another isn't obvious. Moving Outlook Express folders involves finding them, copying them, and importing them. And then there's the address book.

How do I move my Outlook Express folders to my new machine?

In particular, the person asking had just received a new Windows XP machine to replace her Windows 98 machine.

There are several approaches, naturally, but in a nutshell we'll locate the folders on the old machine, copy them to the new machine, and then import them.

And then we'll do something similar for the address book.

On the old machine, the easiest way to locate Outlook Express' email store is to ask Outlook Express. Fire it up, and then in Tools, Options, on the Maintenance tab, there's a button labeled Store Folder. Click that and it will tell you the folder containing your email folder.

Copy the entire contents of that directory to a floppy, CD-ROM, or share on your network.

"There are several approaches, naturally... "

The address book we handle a little differently. Open up the address book either from the accessories menu item on your Start menu, or by pressing Ctrl+Shift+B in Outlook Express. In the address book, select File, Export, and click on Address Book (WAB).... You can now select a location and filename for your address book to be placed. Again, you can copy it to floppy, CD-ROM, or to a share on your network.

Fire up Outlook Express on the new machine, and we'll just reverse the process.

Select File, Import, Messages.... Choose Microsoft Outlook Express 6 and press Next. Select Import mail from an OE6 store directory and press Next. Now on the next screen, browse to the location that you've placed the message store we saved from your old machine. Import, and your messages should now be transferred.

Note: if you've copied your mail folders to a CD-R, you'll need to first copy them to your local hard disk, and then unmark them from being read-only before you import. OE will not open read-only folders.

The process for the address book is similar - even simpler. File, Import, Address Book..., select the address book we exported above, and import.

Finally, you'll want to configure your email accounts in Outlook Express to access your email account from your ISP.

Related:

Article C2130 - July 18, 2004

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Recent Comments
211 Comments

Oh WOW, thanks, simple instructions and I'm writing this as my two thousand plus messages from one computer join the several hundred already on my other.

Posted by: Oliver at September 24, 2009 3:29 AM

thank You for explaining how to move my email messages from one pC to another ! It was easy !

Posted by: JD at September 29, 2009 7:08 PM

I am using outllook express-6 and my most mail directly go to diffrent folder as I defined in Tool>Message Rules>mail.
Now I have changed my computer so how can I get all these settings??

Posted by: RADHESHYAM at October 2, 2009 7:45 AM

sir i have mails in gmail, how to move from outlook expres

Posted by: sridhar at October 17, 2009 6:59 AM

Hi Leo - I have the same issue in trying to move my e-mail from Outlook Express (not Outlook) to a Windows Vista machine. Seems like I have tried everying, even have a easy transfer cable. It too tells me the files contain no messages. Any suggestions? I am now trying to do an export in Outlook Express, but I don't know where it's putting the exported files......HELP!!!!

Posted by: Kelli at October 18, 2009 11:29 AM

Hi Kelli

Here I am with just the same problem. I really hope someone will come up with the goods on this one soon!

Posted by: Neil Heywood at October 21, 2009 2:46 AM

how to bring outlook express in my website

Posted by: ranjith at October 26, 2009 1:39 AM

I followed your advise on how to move my outlook express folders, it moved them alright, but it erased all the messages on the computer that I took it from and I can read the files on the new machine, they are in DBX (whatever that is). I tried system restore and cannot locate where my email might be. Please help. Maybe I'm out of my league here, but it looked fairly easy. But now I'm in worse shape then before!

Posted by: Sandra at November 10, 2009 8:07 AM

My windows XP corrupted, goes blue screen. I did not backup my address book for outlook express, may I know is that a way to recover back the address book?

Posted by: Wilson at November 10, 2009 8:29 PM

Thanks for the instructions, I was prepared to put aside 2 days to forward all my emails so I did not have to take my computer overseas. All contacts and emails copied to my other computer in less than 20 min

Posted by: Michael at November 18, 2009 12:04 AM

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