I have been fortunate enough to upgrade my stand alone home computer twice in the last 4 months. On both occasions I naturally had to reinstall program files and transfer data files. The only data files I have had difficulty with are my Microsoft Outlook Address Book. The first time I was able to locate the relevant file and copy it, and the new computer accepted the file without a problem. Now the computer is telling me that the Address Book is a read-only file that can’t be copied. Is there any way around this? I’m certainly not looking forward to re-keying all the entries.

There shouldn’t be a problem with copying the file if it is read-only. There should only be a problem if Outlook Express is trying to write to the file. In any case, you can remove the read-only tag from the Outlook Address Book file by navigating to the location of the file, right-clicking on the file, and then select ‘Properties’ from the context menu. In the window that appears, click the ‘General’ tab and then untick the box labelled ‘Read-only’. The reasoning behind this point is, that files can become read only when copied from a CD to the hard drive. This happens as CD’s are read only memory (hence their name CD-ROM) so any file that is copied to the CD becomes read only. However, you can remove the read only property by following the previously mentioned procedure.