How do I archive e-mail off of my hard drive?
Mick Horii, Surrey, British Columbia, Canada
The following instructions work for Outlook 2003 and 2007, Windows Mail, and Outlook Express 6.0.
But first, some language clarification: The word "folder" means one thing in Windows and another in your e-mail client. I use the terms "Windows folder" and "Mail folder" to make that distinction clear.
Backing up important messages from Windows Mail is as easy as dragging them to your backup disk.To archive e-mail, insert or attach your archive media-- whether it's an external hard drive, a flash drive, or a DVD--and open it in a Windows Explorer window. Create an Explorer folder on the archive medium called mail archive or whatever you like. Then, simply drag the messages you wish to archive from your mail client to the new Windows folder.
When you return to your client, the messages will still be highlighted, so deleting them will be easy. How do you read archived e-mail? Just attach or insert the archive media, open the Archive folder, find the right message, and double-click it.
You may have trouble identifying your archived messages by their file names, since Windows Explorer doesn't give you as much per-message information as your mail client does. If that's a problem, create a new mail folder with your mail client's File, Folder, New menu command (or Ctrl-Shift-E). Click the new folder to view its complete lack of e-mail, then return to the archive folder on your removable media, press Ctrl-A to select all of the files, and drag them to the newly created folder in your mail client to see all of your archived files.
You have another option for Outlook 2003 and 2007: You can use the program's Archive feature to create an extra Outlook data file of your archive. Select File, Archive for the self-explanatory dialog box. My thanks to PCW forum member smax013 of the Answer Line forum for pointing this out.
How do I clear corrupt mail from my Outlook Express outbox?
Acsgtpd, Answer Line forum
There's no worse place for a corrupted, undeletable message than the outbox. Once such a file lands there, no other messages can get out.
Here's how to fix the problem in Outlook Express.
1. Select Tools, Options. Click the Maintenance tab, then the Store Folder button.
2. The resulting dialog box displays the path to your messages. To open Windows Explorer to this folder, highlight and copy the contents of the text field and then paste it--between quotation marks--in Windows' Run box (which you can get to by selecting Start, Run). Press Enter.
3. Once the folder is open, close the Store Location and Options dialog boxes, and then close Outlook Express.
4. Back in Windows Explorer, rename the file Outbox.dbx. (To be honest, it doesn't really matter what you rename the file; I'm telling you to rename it simply because that's safer than deleting it.)
5. Reopen Outlook Express. You should now have an empty outbox.
For the original discussion of this topic, visit the Answer Line forum.
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