How do I backup my email in outlook express (say onto a cd-r or to a network drive) and how would I restore it so my mail comes back after a re-format?
You need to find the folder where your mail resides and copy that to your backup media. The easiest way to do this, IMO, is to create a mail folder with a distinctive name, such as 12YourName34, and then search for filename 12YourName34.* to find the mail folder. (It will probably be something like c:\windows\application data\identities<long alphanum string>\microsoft\outlook express.
Once you’ve copied your mail folders, do your restore, and then import them (File>Import>Messages) back from where you backed them up.
It’s late, I’m fried, and I see I left out a few things. You create the mail folder within Outlook Express, then find the parent folder where it, and all your other mail folders (Inbox, Deleted Items, etc.), reside. You should be able to see all your folder names within the folder where you’ve backed up your mail.
After your reformat you can then restore your mail folders by importing them.
God, it pains me to think of how many times I’ve had to do this. I just did it the other day to copy my mail from my desktop machine to my new laptop.
Find your mail folders. Click < tools / options / maintenance / store folder > to find the folder. In my case c:\windows\ application data\ microsoft\ outlook express\ mail\ but it can be some other place.
In that folder are all the files where the mail is kept and the tree structure and other info is kept in a file called Folders.dbx. If you delete this file, OE will create a new one. So, if you just copy the other files to the corresponding folder in your other computer and delete the Folders.dbx, then OE will find all the files and create a new Folders.dbx
You can easily test this by renaming the folder where the files are and creating a new one and playing around. Then you can restore things to where they were if you like.
I learnt this from an article on PCWorld http://www.pcworld.com/ which is much more complete. maybe you can find it there.
This might help.