bauhsoj

I need to reinstall Windows XP because this installation is getting a bit past its prime. I need to backup everything in Outlook 2003 including emails, rules, calender, tasks, etc so that after I wipe the drive and reinstall the OS I can access everything I originally had.

So far I have only found a program that will backup the emails and signatures. Is there any way I can retain everything? What files do I need to save and is there anything special that needs to be done to restore them?

sweetloop

You'll need to save your .pst file. This file holds all the information in your Personal Folders (email, folder structure, calendar, etc). If you're not sure where this file is the open Outlook then right-click personal folders in the navigation pane and select properties. Click on advanced and in the filename field you should be able to see where the file is.

Back this file up on an external hard drive or a cd or whatever you're using. It can get quite big depending on how much stuff you've got in Outlook. When you copy it back, copy it to somewhere like C:\email\ so that you can find it easily. This will copy all of the content of the folders over. If you use a CD to back it up you'll need to turn off the read-only file attribute once you've copied it back to your computer or you'll have trouble opening the file. When you've reinstalled Outlook, click on File then Open and choose Outlook Data File to reopen it.

I'm not sure if this will copy over your rules or not since I don't really use rules myself. Something tells me it won't. There is also the File and Settings Transfer Wizard in Windows XP that might do the trick (Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools). Maybe someone else could shed some light on this?

nickster_uk

Hi...

You can back up pretty much everything by exporting a .pst file to another part of your pc or zip drive etc.

- Open Outlook
- Select File, then Import and Export (you may have to expand the menu)
- Select Export to a file then click Next
- Then Personal Folder File (.pst) then click Next
- If you have multiple account types set up in Outlook i.e pop3 and http, select the one you want to back up. You can then expand the tree on the 'personal folders' to ensure that calender items, notes, tasks, mail etc are there. Also put a tick in include subfolders. Click Next
- Browse to the location to save the data and click Finish
- You can then set a password and encryption if need be

You can back up all your mail rules in a similar way:

- Click Tools
- Then Rules and Alerts
- Then Options
- Click Export
- Select the destination folder and click Save

Once you reinstall, all the data can be imported from the folders you have saved to....(bear in mind to choose a different partition that the one you are going to format though :-)

Hope that helps :-)

bauhsoj

Thanks for all the detailed info. I will give it a try!

I am actually going to be installing a new hard drive that I will be reinstalling everything onto. The old one will remain in the computer as a secondary drive. Any idea if I will run into permission problems with accessing certain directories? I have seen that happen with Win NT, but I don't know about Win XP.

nickster_uk

You may have problems if the new profile has the same name as the old one....but even if this does happen, you can overcome it by changing the folder permissions and ownership :-)

bauhsoj

Will that also export the email addresses and their settings so that I don't have to re-enter everything?