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.
My operating system died on my Acer netbook and I want to retrieve the outlook express files, especially my inbox and transfer them to another computer. What is the best way to get them from the dead computer in a format that will allow me to transfer them?
31-Aug-2011
Posted by: Larry at August 31, 2011 3:48 PM
how can i gate my outlook email backup and also what is the simple way for sharing folders with many pc's.
Posted by: sahill at September 11, 2011 12:03 PMThanks for the advise. Actually I wasn't moving my email files from one computer to another. My computer crashed Sep. 25, 2011 and I had to reinstall Windows XP to get it back in service. Luckily, I have Norton Ghost 12.0 and a backed up copy from the day before it crashed. But unfortunately, I wasn't sure how to do a restore from Norton Ghost. I do now. But since my email files were backed up in a Recovery Point, I could restore the files back to the original directory, but they still wouldn't open with Outlook Express. I even tried moving the *.dbx files to my correct identity subfolder, but still no luck. I followed most of your procedures and it worked just great. Thanks!
Posted by: Mike at October 6, 2011 3:43 PMYour instructions worked perfectly. Really appreciate your help.
Posted by: Wayne at November 13, 2011 2:33 PMI have 2 XP comps. On the old one I have copied the dbx files to a thumb drive and placed them on the new comp in a folder on the desk top. I then found the path for the new comps outlook express dbx files and move the old ones to that path. But nothing shows up. They are not set as read only so I'm lost. One of the files I did get to show up one time. I removed all the ones I had put there then I added that one that showed up by its self. So I figured I would have to do it one at a time and not all at once. But this doesnt seem to be the case. Any idea's?
Posted by: Jason at December 15, 2011 9:17 AM