Okay, here’s the background. Up until this past week we have had two computers in the house sharing the same dial-up connection on a first-come, first serves basis. Only one email address. So if the emails were opened on my computer, they’re archived in the inbox that is presumably somewhere in my hard drive. And if they were opened on kaylasmom’s computer, they get archived in her hard drive.
Well, kaylasmom has just been given a new computer. Bigger, better everything, including Windows XP, a step up from Win98. I temporarily removed the hard drive from her old computer, hooked it into the new system, and transferred all of the files that we keep on the computer (documents, pictures, some music; the library from her Braille translator; that kind of stuff).
What I can’t figure out how to transfer are her archived emails. I can’t even find them. I figure if I can find them using Windows Explorer, I can copy or move them to a corresponding location in the new hard drive, allowing a near-seamless transition to the new system.
If it’s helpful, our former ISP is Earthlink, and the email program we use is Outlook Express.
I’m pretty sure the Export function is what you’re looking for. Export to .pst on one machine, import on the other.
Incidentally, if you’re going to continue opening mail on two machines, I’d recommend setting one to ‘never delete’ mail from the server, and the other to delete after a few weeks. (Or never, if you know how to manage it manually). That way both machines will have a copy of all the emails.
If you don’t want to go through the trouble of reconnecting the old drive to the old 'puter and exporting the .pst you can always do a search (with the old drive connected to the new 'puter) for “*.pst” (no quotes). Then copy it to your desktop, or somewhere easy to get to, and on the new computer’s outlook express import that .pst
Of course, I’ve only done this in regular outlook (not express), but I think this should work for you.
Unless you have a MAPI/IMAP mail account, you can’t do a generic email export from Win98 Outlook Express. Other mail programs on the same PC will import from OE, such as Outlook or Thunderbird.
I googled around and there are various methods of doing this. Just copying and transferring OE’s email folder files might work, but do a little research before going ahead with that. The OE email files will have the same names as your folders. I forget what the extensions are, but I know they aren’t “.pst”.
Here’s what I wound up doing. I decided I was switching to Thunderbird, so I installed it on the old PC and did the import. I then backed it up with Mozbackup and transferred the backup files to the new PC. I installed Tbird on the new PC and restored the mail with Mozbackup.
After I had done that, I realized I really didn’t need Mozbackup and could have just transferred the Tbird files themselves.
Somehow in all of this, I didn’t get my address book. As it’s small, this was not a big problem for me. But if you have a lot of contacts and go this route, make sure you get your address book imported correctly.
Why does kaylasdad99 have to ask this question here?
It would seem to me that this is among the most inevitable operations one is likely to perform with their email. Sooner or later, someday, everyone gets a new computer or upgrades an old one.
Where is it described in the OE help system? I can’t find it (even the Export function only specifically describes exporting to Outlook or MS Exchange). Why is it so obscure?
Just thought I’d pop in and mention that I found out how to do it. Thanks to the assistance provided here, I was able to find each set of our archived emails, and copy the .dbx files to a CD-ROM, but I still couldn’t figure out how to import them. Sunacres provided the inspiration I required. I Googled “Windows, message boards, help”, and found a forum that provided all the help I could use. On this site I learned that:
In Windows 2000, the .dbx files are hidden. A quick trip to Windows Explore, showed me how to take administrative actions with files and folders, notably “show hidden files.” This allowed me to find the location of the files. Then I had to remove them from that location, to an auxiliary folder.
The Outlook Express Import Mesages Wizard is happy to import the files that I have moved to a folder in the hard disk, but it’s not real thrilled with importing them from a folder on the desktop, or directly from a home-made CD-ROM.
The Wizard will not import read-only files. Fortunately, removing the read-only attribute is easily accomplished, using the “Properties” function.
After I successfully transferred my emails onto Windows 2000, it took me five minutes to perform the same task on my wife’s WinXP.