outlook express in 2000

[homer15]

hey guys,

after my os crashed, i tried to repair my installation of win2kpro. it would not repair not matter what i did, so i installed another copy of it on the same partition. i now have a c:\winnt and a c:\winnt2. the only thing that i'm trying to salvage off the drive is a bunch of e-mails i had stored in outlook express, then i'm going to do a complete format and reinstall. where are the individual mailboxes saved in 2000?

[pillainp]

They will be in the following folder:
C:\Documents and Settings\%Username%\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{..........}\Microsoft\Outlook Express.

or
C:\Documents and Settings\%Username%\Application Data\Identities\{..........}\Microsoft\Outlook Express.

Just open your current working copy of Outlook Express, select File>Import>Messages. Then select the program you want to import from and point the browser to the location above. You will have to set your folder settings to "View all Files" and choose to view protected system files in My Computer.

Hope that helps
NPP

[homer15]

thanks a lot, pillainp. i'll give that a try when i get home. if it works, you've practically saved my lfie.

[pillainp]

Hey Homer15, glad to be of help.

Here's another tip you can try:
In Outlook Express go to Tools>Options>Maintenance and click the "Store Folder" button. It will show you your current store folder and give you the option to change it. You could point it to some easy to locate folder on another partition or even better another physical drive. Outlook Express will move all your mailboxes there automatically. That way, even if your OS should die on you, your mail would still be safe and you wouldn't need to search all over for it.
You could also search for all files with the extension *.dbx in your user profile and save copies of them in another location so that even if you lost your mail, you would at least have a backup that you can import from. Personally this is what I do before every OS install\upgrade.

Have a great day (or night) :-)
NPP

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BTW: Something I just remembered. If you reinstalled windows on to C: again, and you have a user with the same name, you may already have overwritten your old user data with the new, and may not be able to retrieve your mail. If that has not happened, find and copy all *.dbx files in that user profile (you should be able to tell by the names and creation times of the files) to a new location and then import from there by pointing your OE message importer to that folder.

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Apologies on the long post.
NPP