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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
226 Comments

I did exactly as specified above for my messages. They are in the folder with the new messages that have since been stored. However they show up in outlook express when I open it. I got a new computer but it still has xp as did my old machine.

Posted by: Jazzfan at January 16, 2010 11:46 AM

I have XP on my old desktop and my new laptop has windows 7, how can I get all emails to this address on my new machine?

Posted by: jim scott at January 19, 2010 6:01 AM

Thank you! I've been trying to restore a clients emails into his Outlook - You made it simple!

Posted by: Laura at February 3, 2010 10:51 PM

TYVM for this info. Made it Helen Keller easy to get it done.

Posted by: steven peterson at February 8, 2010 11:00 AM

I am trying to restore my email messages from an external hard drive to Outlook Express. I have saved the messages in a file on my hard drive as you recommended in the above post. However, when I try to import them into Outlook Express I get the following error message: No messages can be found in this folder or another application is running that has the required files open. Please select another folder or thy closing applications that may have files open. I'm not aware of any other applications running with the files open although I do have the messages saved in a folder on my desktop. How do I complete the import?

Posted by: Bill Kendrick at February 8, 2010 6:19 PM

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