I can backup data (such as documents) easily enough by dragging and dropping the data onto an external hard drive or other media. However, I am unsure about the best way to backup email from a Windows XP computer running Outlook Express and a Windows 7 computer running Windows Live Mail. In particular, I would appreciate assistance with the following questions:

- How do I backup emails from Outlook Express and Windows Live Mail?
- How do I restore emails back into Outlook Express and Windows Live Mail?
- How do I transfer (migrate) backed up emails from Outlook Express into Windows Live Mail?
- How do I transfer contacts from Outlook Express into Windows Live Mail and vice-versa?

I have been waiting for someone else to ask these questions and I am surprised no one has, so I would appreciate your advice on these matters.

These are certainly good questions and raise important issues. As you say, many users are likely asking the same question given the importance of email backup. Let’s deal with each of your questions in turn so that we can ensure adequate attention is given to each topic. We will first start with how to backup emails from Outlook Express. This is fortunately a fairly easy process, as Outlook Express stores all of the email in one folder (directory) on your computer known as the mail store folder. You can find the location of the mail store folder by opening Outlook Express and then going to the “Tools” menu > “Options”. In the window that appears, click the “Maintenance” tab and the “Store Folder” button. This will show the location of the mail store folder. Write down this location, as we will need it shortly, then close all the windows and Outlook Express. Next, open Windows Explorer or My Computer. Before going any further we need to enable the display of hidden files and folders since the mail store folder is contained within a hidden location. Go to the “Tools” menu > “Folder Options”. In the window that appears, click the “View” tab and enable “Show hidden files and folders” and disable “Hide file extensions for known file types” (you will find out why we have shown file extensions in a moment). Click OK to apply and save the changes. Now navigate to the mail store folder on the computer. You will see within the folder a series of DBX files each with the name of an Outlook Express folder. Each of those DBX files stores the email contained within the folder (of the same name) in Outlook Express. In order to backup your Outlook Express email you simply need to copy the entire mail store folder (which contains all the DBX files) to your backup media, such as an external hard drive.

Since we are on the topic of backing-up Outlook Express we should also discuss the process for restoring the backup back into Outlook Express. The first option is to do a wholesale restoration, meaning that you want to completely restore all the backed-up email and you don’t have any other email in Outlook Express at the moment (such as if you do a clean reinstallation of Windows and wish to restore your email). To commence this process you first need to run Outlook Express and go through the first-run wizard to setup your email account(s). This will allow Outlook Express an opportunity to create the mail store folder, which you will need. Once all the initial setup has completed it may commence downloading new messages. Stop this process, as it could cause problems down the track (as you will see later). Close Outlook Express and then copy the contents of the backed-up mail store folder across onto your computer. Now, next time you open Outlook Express all the email should be present. However, there is a second restoration scenario that we should consider – the situation where you wish to merge the backed-up email with existing email on your computer. For example, if you did a clean reinstallation of Windows and then re-setup Outlook Express and downloaded your latest email then a wholesale restoration would result in that latest email being lost, as you are overwriting the mail store files (containing that new email) with the backed-up copies of the mail store file. This is why I said in the previous procedure that you need to stop Outlook Express from downloading new messages once you have finished the initial email account setup. If you were not able to, or there are already messages in Outlook Express (for one reason or another) that you wish to keep you should proceed with this procedure to merge the existing mail store, and backed-up mail store, so that no messages in either of the mail store files are lost. To do this open Outlook Express and go to the “File” menu > “Import” > “Messages”. A window will appear asking you to select an email program to import from. Select “Microsoft Outlook Express 6” and click “Next”. Select “Import mail from an OE6 store directory” and then click the “OK” button. In the next window you need to navigate to the location of the mail store folder that you wish to import – this will be the backed-up mail store folder. Once this has been selected, click “Next” and keep following through the wizard to complete the import process.

To backup email in Windows Live Mail you follow a very similar process, first getting the location of the mail store folder. This is exactly the same procedure as Outlook Express except that the menu bar is not displayed by default in Windows Live Mail, so to display the menu bar press the ALT key and then you can proceed to go to the “Tools” menu > “Options” > “Advanced” tab and click the “Maintenance” button then the “Store Folder” button. Once you have obtained the mail store folder location you can navigate to that folder and then copy the folder onto your backup media. To bring the messages back into Windows Live Mail you can either elect to do a wholesale restoration (as we discussed previously) or a merge which will import the messages into Windows Live Mail and not overwrite any existing messages. To do the import in Windows Live Mail, go to the “File” menu > “Import” > “Messages” then select “Windows Live Mail” and follow the prompts to select the mail store folder that should be imported.

Now that the first two of your questions have been addressed we should move onto some of the more challenging questions such as migrating email between Outlook Express and Windows Live Mail together with how to migrate contacts between the two programs. We will first deal with the email migration since that is a much more straight-forward process. In fact, you generally follow the same process as restoring the backup of your email we discussed previously. Open Windows Live Mail and go to the “File” menu > “Import”. However, in the next window that appears select “Microsoft Outlook Express 6” as the source of the messages that you wish to import, since we are attempting to transfer your email from Outlook Express into Windows Live Mail. Click “Next” and then follow through the wizard as we have on the previous occasions except you will need to select the mail store folder containing the backup of your Outlook Express 6 files.

We will now discuss the process of moving your contacts between Outlook Express and Windows Live Mail. This is a bit more of an involved process and there is not really a good transitional route between the two programs. We first need to export the address book from Outlook Express 6. Open Outlook Express and then go to the “File” menu > “Export” > “Address Book”. In the window that appears requesting the file type to which you would like to export the address book, select “Text File (Comma Separated Values)” and click “Export”. Save the exported file to your desktop and click “Next”. You now need to select the fields that you wish to export. I suggest that you tick all the fields to ensure that you export all the information. Once all the fields are ticked, click “Finish” and the address book will be exported to the file you specified on the desktop. Now that we have exported the address book, that file needs to be copied to your other computer running Windows Live Mail so that the contents of the address book can be imported. Once the file has been copied across, open Windows Live Mail. Press the ALT key to show the menu bar and go to the “Go” menu > “Contacts”. In the Contacts window that appears, go to the “File” menu > “Import” > “Comma Separated Values (CSV)”. In the CSV Import wizard window, browse to the CSV file that you exported and click “Next”. Select all the fields to indicate that you wish to import them all, to ensure that you get the most complete import and then click “Finish”. Once the import has completed all of your contacts should be present in Windows Live Mail.

You also asked the question about how to export contacts from Windows Live Mail to Outlook Express. I am uncertain in what situation you would wish to reverse direction, but it is relatively straight-forward. In the Windows Live Mail Contacts go to the “File” menu > “Export” and then export the Windows Live Mail contacts in CSV format (just like we did with Outlook Express). Then, transfer that CSV file back across to your computer running Outlook Express and within Outlook Express on that machine, go to the “File” menu > “Import” > “Other Address Book” and import the “Text File (Comma Separated Values)” into Outlook Express.