# Where/how is Outlook Express mail stored?



## pianoman1949 (Feb 7, 2005)

Anybody know details of getting Outlook Express mail from an old Windows installation to a new one?

A cyber-clueless friend wanted to upgrade from Windows 98, so he bought an additional hard drive, made it the primary master, and installed Windows 2000 Professional on it.

Now he wants to grab his email (and address book, etc.) from the old drive, which is still in there as the primary slave. But I can't figure out how or where it is stored. Everything I read on this topic requires you to have already done a backup from within (the old) Outlook Express first. And we can't do that because 98 won't boot anymore; I get the "has generated errors and will be shut down" message from Explorer, and then it hangs, even in Safe Mode.

Maybe I'm spoiled by Eudora, but seems like it should be just a matter of moving a bunch of files into a different folder. Isn't there a setting under options in Outlook Express for where the data is to be stored?

I read somewhere that they are stored as .dbx files, and these do show up in a search, but strangely, I can't navigate to them in Explorer. It's like some internediate folders in the path are hidden.

I would appreciate if someone who understands Outlook Express better than I do can provide a solution. It's OE version 6, I believe.

(Plan B: If there's no other alternative, can I do a repair on Windows 98 that might fix it enough to boot to the desktop without clobbering the data and run OE?)

Thanks,
Ted


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## ebackhus (Apr 21, 2005)

The files are stored with the names like the folders they represent. They are inside of the Application Data folder which is hidden by default. I can't remember the extension at the moment but I _think_ it was .dbx.


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## pianoman1949 (Feb 7, 2005)

ebackhus said:


> The files are stored with the names like the folders they represent. They are inside of the Application Data folder which is hidden by default. I can't remember the extension at the moment but I _think_ it was .dbx.


Nothing should be hidden. That's what confused me.


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## littshepkid02 (Sep 13, 2005)

well you could always use the search program the comes with windows


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## pianoman1949 (Feb 7, 2005)

littshepkid02 said:


> well you could always use the search program the comes with windows


As I said, I did that, and they did show up in the search result, which confused me even more. I wouldn't expect they would show up there and not in Explorer.


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## ebackhus (Apr 21, 2005)

The files aren't hidden, but the folders are. To backup them up just copy-> paste them to another location. When you want to use them again tell Outlook where they are and restart it.


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## littshepkid02 (Sep 13, 2005)

ebackhus said:


> The files aren't hidden, but the folders are. To backup them up just copy-> paste them to another location. When you want to use them again tell Outlook where they are and restart it.


use the backup wizzard................


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## pianoman1949 (Feb 7, 2005)

ebackhus said:


> The files aren't hidden, but the folders are.


That's something I've never run across before. Is there a way to "un-hide" them?



ebackhus said:


> To backup them up just copy-> paste them to another location. When you want to use them again tell Outlook where they are and restart it.


That is exactly what I would love to know how to do. I would expect to see an OE "options" or "preferences" setting where you point to the path and folder containing the data, but OE doesn't appear to have that.


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## ebackhus (Apr 21, 2005)

littshepkid02 said:


> use the backup wizzard................


That would be inefficient for this task.

To un-hide them use the Folders and Views control panel and check "Show hidden folder and files."

To assign the storage location go to Tools -> Options... and click the Maintenance tab. The click the "Store Folder" button and choose the location you wish.


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## pianoman1949 (Feb 7, 2005)

ebackhus said:


> To un-hide them use the Folders and Views control panel and check "Show hidden folder and files."


I have already done that, and some of the intermediate folders in the path (Local Settings) still are not showing up in the Explorer window. *That's* what is confusing me. 

Update: now I'm even more confused; I just looked at my work computer, and it doesn't have that problem. The entire path is there. (Well, the work computer has XP instead of 2000, maybe that's the difference.) 



ebackhus said:


> To assign the storage location go to Tools -> Options... and click the Maintenance tab. The click the "Store Folder" button and choose the location you wish.


AHA!! THAT'S what I was looking for! Does that apply just to mailboxes, or the other stuff too (address book, etc.)?

Thanks very much.


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## pianoman1949 (Feb 7, 2005)

Ok, the instructions I needed were posted in another forum:


> Show Hidden Files and Folders may need to be enabled.
> 
> Do a Search on the old drive for .dbx files.
> Copy or Move *All* the .dbx files to a folder on the Desktop.
> ...


I finally got my friend's computer to the point where I could try this. I found the .dbx files on his old drive via the search, so I didn't have to navigate to them in Explorer. 

I copied-and-pasted them to another location, then imported into Outlook Express as explained above. I did get a couple errors, which went away when I quit trying to think independently and followed the instructions exactly:

1. Copy to the desktop (not some other folder)
2. Copy *all* the files, not just select one or two

As soon as I did both of those, everything worked fine. 

Thanks,
Ted


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