How do I back up my e-mails onto CD

G

Guest

I have a large number of important business and personal e-mails on my
desktop. I want to safeguard against a hard disk crash (or stolen computer)
by copying these e-mails onto a CD. How do I do this?
 
W

wayfarrer

All of your Outlook data (including your address book which is called Contacts)
is contained in one file, usually named outlook.pst. If you search using *.pst,
you may also find archive.pst, which is where the content of user designated
folders are archived. You may have to allow hidden files to be shown via Folder
Options to find these files.

As an alternative, see this link for a free backup utility for Outlook 2000 and
later versions:

Outlook 2003 Add-in: Personal Folders Backup
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...3a-b7d0-4b16-b8af-5a6322f4fd01&displaylang=en

For non-networked stations the most common transfer can be made by burning a
copy of the pst file(s) to a CD-R or CD-RW disc, and then copying the file to
the other system, remove the read-only attribute of the file, and then use the
import feature to transfer the data. Be sure to clear the read-only attribute of
the pst files, if required.

See this link for info regarding the location of many other Outlook files you
may want to transfer:

Outlook & Exchange/Windows Messaging Backup and Dual-Boot
http://www.slipstick.com/config/backup.htm
 
G

Guest

A belated thank you for your suggestion. It has solved my problem.

regards

Sandy Barnes
 
G

Guest

Brian Tillman said:
http://www.howto-outlook.com/howto/backupandrestore.htm
Click to expand...

I'm checking out these instructions for backing up my emails, and have a few
questions before I go any farther (but this certainly looks like what I need).

In my "Inbox" I have quite a few folders, and within these folders are MORE
folders containing emails with attachments. I need to retain that folder
structure AND the attachments. In the past when I've tried to save or back
up this material, the individual emails all went into one long text file, and
the attachments disappeared, so I'm a little paranoid about this now.

Does the backup and restore procedure listed on this link retain that folder
structure and the attachments?

Also, if I need to find a certain email once it's been backed up, can I go
onto that CD where I've saved it, browse through and find it, or does it all
need to be Imported back into outlook?

Thank you for any help!
Pamela
 
R

Roady [MVP]

"Does the backup and restore procedure listed on this link retain that
folder
structure and the attachments?"

Yes, use the method to backup (copy) the entire pst-file when Outlook is
closed.

"Also, if I need to find a certain email once it's been backed up, can I go
onto that CD where I've saved it, browse through and find it, or does it all
need to be Imported back into outlook?"

No on both. You'll need to copy it back to the hard disk (remove "Read
Only") and connect to it in Outlook by File-> Open-> Outlook Data File...

--
Robert Sparnaaij [MVP-Outlook]
Coauthor, Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003


-----

Brian Tillman said:
http://www.howto-outlook.com/howto/backupandrestore.htm
Click to expand...

I'm checking out these instructions for backing up my emails, and have a few
questions before I go any farther (but this certainly looks like what I
need).

In my "Inbox" I have quite a few folders, and within these folders are MORE
folders containing emails with attachments. I need to retain that folder
structure AND the attachments. In the past when I've tried to save or back
up this material, the individual emails all went into one long text file,
and
the attachments disappeared, so I'm a little paranoid about this now.

Does the backup and restore procedure listed on this link retain that folder
structure and the attachments?

Also, if I need to find a certain email once it's been backed up, can I go
onto that CD where I've saved it, browse through and find it, or does it all
need to be Imported back into outlook?

Thank you for any help!
Pamela
 
G

Guest

Relocating the .pst file is all OK up to the point where you say "If all is
successful . . ." But it isn't (or it isn't in XP anyway).

I got right through to the end of point 5 and thought that I had directed
OUTLOOK to the new location (actually in C:\My Documents\My outlook in my
case as my D-drive is to a CD).

When OUTLOOK opened it is now totally devoid of any content.

I then went back to the previous file (now labelled .old) and re-labelled
that .pst, with no better result.

How do I now get my OUTLOOK data back into OUTLOOK please ??

Regards
Richard Burfitt
 
B

Brian Tillman

Richard Burfitt said:
When OUTLOOK opened it is now totally devoid of any content.

I then went back to the previous file (now labelled .old) and
re-labelled that .pst, with no better result.

How do I now get my OUTLOOK data back into OUTLOOK please ??
Click to expand...

Without starting Outloook, add the PST you want to your mail profile using
the Data Files button in Control Panel's Mail applet. Make that PST the
default delivery location using the E-Mail Accounts button, selections View
or change existing e-mail accounts>Next, drop-down "Delivery new e-mail to
the following location" at the lower left.
 
G

Guest

Thanks for your help Brian but I'm not quite with you all the way.
There seems to be 2 parts in what you say I need to do.

The first part is : Control Panel>Mail Applet>Data files.

This gives me 3 files listed :
Archive folders in C:\Docs & Settings\Local Settings\App. Data.\Ms\Outlook
Personal Folders in C:\ Docs & Settings\Outlook Back-up
Personal Folders in C:\ Docs & Settings\Richard\My Documents
I cannot change any of these.
The latter is the one used for mail delivery and is working. This a .pst
file. The original OUTLOOK file (in C:\Docs & Settings\Local Settings\App.
Data.\Ms\Outlook) is now a .old file.


When you say that I need to "Add the PST I want to my mail profile . . . "
there are 2 points :
What PST do I want that is not there already ?
And how do I actually add this PST ?

The second part of your advice is to "Make that PST the
default delivery location using the E-Mail Accounts button, selections View
or change existing e-mail accounts>Next, drop-down "Delivery new e-mail to
the following location" at the lower left.

This "Deliver new e-mail to the following location" bit already has 3
entries (Personal Folders;Archive Folders;Personal Folders).
New e-mail is already being correctly delivered to OUTLOOK.

What I cannot get back is all the 32 individual folders that I had
previously, in which 6-years messages are filed and stored.

When I opened OUTLOOK for the first time I go a message saying "You may need
to copy the contents of the old OUTLOOK Folders to the new OUTLOOK Folders.

I do - but how do I do this please ?

Still Confused

Richard Burfitt
 
B

Brian Tillman

Richard Burfitt said:
When you say that I need to "Add the PST I want to my mail profile .
. . " there are 2 points :
What PST do I want that is not there already ?
Click to expand...

When you said your Outlook was "totally devoid of any content:, that is a
fair indication that you created a new PST, which would be the one in My
Documents, probably, because you say that's your current delivery location.
Obviously, then, your old data must be in some other PST that is not
currently in your mail profile. Search your hard drive, making sure you
have enabled showing hidden files and folders, fior any other PSTs.
And how do I actually add this PST ?
Click to expand...

With the Add button in the Mail app. Don't you see it there? It's below
"Open Folder" and above "Remove".
The second part of your advice is to "Make that PST the
default delivery location using the E-Mail Accounts button,
selections View or change existing e-mail accounts>Next, drop-down
"Delivery new e-mail to the following location" at the lower left.

This "Deliver new e-mail to the following location" bit already has 3
entries (Personal Folders;Archive Folders;Personal Folders).
New e-mail is already being correctly delivered to OUTLOOK.
Click to expand...

By your own admission It's being delivered to the PST in your "My Documents"
What I cannot get back is all the 32 individual folders that I had
previously, in which 6-years messages are filed and stored.
Click to expand...

They're probably in the PST you renamed to .old back in %UserProfile%\Local
Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook. You said yourself that "The
original OUTLOOK file (in C:\Docs & Settings\Local
Settings\App.Data.\Ms\Outlook) is now a .old file." Rename that back to
..pst and add it to your mail profile with the Add button on the Data Files
dialogue.
When I opened OUTLOOK for the first time I go a message saying "You
may need to copy the contents of the old OUTLOOK Folders to the new
OUTLOOK Folders.
Click to expand...

It's fairly obvious you did not move your PST correctly. If you wanted to
move the PST that was in the original folder to, say, your My Documents
folder, you just move it with Outlook closed and then start Outlook. It
would have complained that it could not find your folders and present to you
a browser window that you could have used to browse to the new location of
your PST, select it, and then click OK. Outlook would then have given you
all your original folders.
 
G

Guest

Thank you for all that Brian - - - I finally got everything back to where
it was, but I'm still not too sure that I want to start trying to back-up my
OUTLOOK folders onto a CD again. I'm sure that something as important as
that needn't be quite as difficult as all this.

I think that I did manage to get the move to MY DOCUMENTS done correctly
because the size of the file in MD was the same as that still in the original
location. Somehow though I wasn't able to understand the computerese to get
the files back into OUTLOOK.

Never mind - there're there now.

Many Thanks

Richard Burfitt
 
J

John

I never backup my pst-file: all my important e-mail is saved on the
file system (c:\data\projects\).
And of course, I backup that folders every day on a external hard disk.
Sometimes on a DVD.
Big profit is that i can find and open every document on the backup:
e.g. every single e-mail is saved as a msg file. Easy to find and
recognise, and i can open it directory from cd!
 
G

Guest

Thanks so much for the info John!

Would you please share some more details on how I can do this?

Thanks in advance.
 
G

Guest

John,
I have a question for you. When you save these as MSG files, (including
attachments), is the size of the data the same as the PST file? I am trying
to find out if the PST file compresses the MSG files and attachments inside.
I have a cient for whom we electronically extracted PST information and the
file size went from 3 GIGS to 10 GIGS after the extraction. This seems to me
that there is some sort of compression inside the PST. Thanks for any
information! Tina
 
J

John

What is bigger in size? The pst file?
In that case, did you compact the pst file after extracting the emails
out of the pst file? Compacting is an option of Outlook itself.

Or do you mean the storage of all msg files is bigger (more GIGS) than
when the e-mail is in the pst file?

By the way, how did you extract them? Did you use MailToFile?


TH schreef:
 
G

Guest

When the MSG and attached files are extracted, the file size of the folder
containing them is larger than the PST. Here is an example: Original PST =
137MB. Emails and attachment folder = 267 MB. That is almost double in
size. I extracted using a VERY expensive software our company purchased for
electronic data discovery processing.
 
J

John

This is very interesting.
I did a test. I started the special function of MailToFile to archive
bulk email to a directory: I archived all e-mail of all Outlook folders
to c:\test\

The results are:
size of the original PST = 1.5 GB
size of all archived 17.000 emails: 1.8 GB.
This is 300MB extra for 17.000 files = 0,0176MB extra per file or 17,6
kb per file.
That difference will be the file system information about the start and
end of the file, e.g. a Worddocument with no words in it counts 20 kb.
By the way, the size of my PST didn't change. In case I had checked the
option Delete after archiving, the PST would be empty (or with a full
trash) :)

Maybe the attachments were archived separately?

I can do that as well, so I did another test.
I took a little PST file, size 10MB
I archived all email, attachments separately as well (they were not
deleted from the message itself!!)
The size of all 56 archived email (including attachments): 10MB
The size of the 70 attachments: 9 MB
Total size of all archived files: 19 MB

What's your conclusion?
 

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