Helping people with computers... one answer at a time.
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.
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.
Article C2130 - July 18, 2004
Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he
was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed.
After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers
to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.
On the page http://ask-leo.com/how_do_i_move_my_outlook_express_folders_to_my_new_machine.html, the link that points to "Can I import Outlook Express email into another instance of Outlook Express?" is broken. It doesn't have the "ask-leo.com" part. The correct link is http://ask-leo.com/can_i_import_outlook_express_email_into_another_instance_of_outlook_express.html/
Posted by: Bob P. at April 13, 2012 8:25 AM@Bob
Posted by: Mark J at April 13, 2012 10:36 AMThanks. It's fixed now.
Thanks for advice, worked like a charm. Just want to add there was no option for addressess to be extracted as (WAB) so i used comma seperated and then loaded them as .. thanks again. James_forextu
Posted by: James at April 20, 2012 7:19 AMTried to find Out-Express Folders done as you suggest, and got (C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{8E8C1ADB-278C-4414-8C83-0960389B3D0F}\Microsoft\Outlook Express) went to C:\Documents and Settings\Owner & got a choice of Desktop, Favourites. Start menu or ntuser.dat files. Where do I go from here? what have I done wrong?
05-May-2012
Im trying to import a .dbx file into outlook express just as specified, but I keep getting the error " No messages can be found in this folder or ....". I moved the file to a seperate folder by itself and made sure it is not hidden or checked for read only. It is saved on the hard disk but I keep getting the error. any help. Its a big file though, aprox 2,097,120 KB
Posted by: Eric at May 23, 2012 11:41 AM