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Before attempting email backup follow our Showing hidden files guide to reveal your hidden files and folders

Having revealed your hidden files and folders you need to navigate to where the mail is stored using windows explorer or my computer. Unfortunately the location varies with each e-mail client.

Outlook Express files are stored in:

C:\Documents and Settings\<UserName>\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{<Big Long Number>}\Microsoft\Outlook Express

Phew! How were you ever supposed to know that! Replace <UserName> with a real username. <Big Long Number> Is unkown. On my own computer the is number is 0212332F-06F8-4622-8C3B-36F62AF637B4 but yours will be different. It is best to navigate there using my computer or Explorer. When you are looking at this folder You can copy the copy all the files to make a backup.

Is that enough? No! Now you need the address book which contains all your contact e-mail addresses and any other details you have entered for each contact. Is it in the same place? No it’s in yet another hidden folder here:

C:\Documents and Settings\<UserName>\Application Data\Microsoft\Address Book

Obvious! After navigating here we can copy the file <UserName>.wab again replace <UserName> with a real username to make our backup file.

Outlook files are stored in:

C:\Documents and Settings\<UserName>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

again replace <username> with a real user name. In this location we should find a file called outlook.pst this is the file that needs to be copied for your backup.

Mozilla Thunderbird files are stored in a similar location:

C:\Documents and Settings\<UserName>\Application Data\Thunderbird

again replace <username> with a real user name. In this location we should find a folder called Pofiles and a couple of small data files all these files need to be copied for your backup.

Wonderfully simple!

We cannot cover backup for other programs that you may have installed especially if these programs store data in their own private locations. The easy way to find these other files is to open the program and a data file. Then select Save As... in nearly all cases this will show you which folder the files are stored in. For the majority of programs these will not be hidden.

Having located all the files we need It’s now just a matter of copying them to somewhere safe. How you do this will depend on how much data you have and what backup devices are fitted in the computer. For reasonable amounts of data a writable CD or USB Pen Drive is a quick and easy way to backup data. For larger amounts a DVD writer is a good option. Writeable CDs typically hold 730Mb. Pen drives range from 128Mb. to 4Gb. but the large sizes are currently quite expensive. Single Layer Write-able DVDs hold 4.7Gb of data and Dual Layer DVD driives will hold upto 8.5Gb of data.
 

Backup with Windows:

Windows built in functions can easily be used to make a good backup. Simple insert a blank writable or Read/Write CD into the CD-Writer drive. Windows will ask what you want to do with it. The option you want is “Open a writeable CD folder using Windows Explorer” select this option and an empty folder will appear. Now locate your files as described above and simply drag and drop or Copy & Paste the files to this new writeable folder. Take care about how much data you are copying to a CD as windows will not tell you if there is no remaining space!

When you have finished copying files select “write these files to CD” from the tasks option on the write-able CD folder or from the File menu. When the CD writing has completed. Label the CD and store it in a safe place - peace of mind!