Save Emails for Transfer

  • Thread starter Thread starter Donneda
  • Start date Start date
D

Donneda

Hello Community,

I want to go back to XP from Vista only because I want to sync my laptop and
desktop and don't have the money to upgrade Vista to the business version. I
have several valuable emails, though, in Windows Mail on the Vista desktop.
How can I save them to a flash drive so that I can wipe out the partition and
reinstall XP? I will not do the switch if I cannot take my email trail with
me.

I am a PhD student so my email documents are extremely valuable and I cannot
take the risk of losing them. I've done this before when going from an older
XP machine to a newer one, but I've never done this trying to go from Vista
back to XP.

Any step by step help is appreciated.

Many Thanks,
Donneda
 
I don't understand what you think going back to XP will do for you.
Depending on what you mean by syncing, Vista can do most anything that
XP can do.

Also, laptops manufactured for Vista are very difficult to retrofit to XP
because XP drivers are often not available for that newer hardware.
 
Ok. When I go to C:\Users\(username)\ I don't have the option for
AppData. Is there any other link for this option? I have looked several
places. I can save my "recent emails" but that only covers the last couple of
weeks.

What else?
 
Well, when I had XP on both my laptop and my desktop, I was able to use a
parallel cable to synchronize my files between the two. When I bought my new
desktop it came with Vista Home. I was informed that the synchronizing option
was only available if I purchased the near $200 Vista Business upgrade. So
for the last year, I've had to use a flash drive to keep my files updated on
both machines which is becoming very cumbersome and confusing.

My laptop has XP on it. Instead of upgrading both machines to Vista Business
for $400, I thought that it would be easier to downgrade my desktop to XP so
that I could get my synchronization working again. But, I don't want to do
that at the risk of losing my emails.

If you know of a way to synch my Windows XP laptop to my Vista Home Premium
desktop, please let me know. My bottom line challenge is that I do a lot of
work on my laptop and desktop independently and really need to be able to
have the files correspond.

I work full-time while finishing my PhD. So I use both machines and want my
files to all match.

Any help you can offer is appreciated.
 
Windows by default will not display files or folders with the
'hidden' attribute. To change that, with Windows Explorer open,
press Alt to bring up the menu bar, then Tools, Folder Options,
View, click the button for "Show hidden files and folders."
While you're there, uncheck "Hide extensions..."
You should now be able to navigate to AppData.

Frankly, if all you want to do is backup your mail, I would do so
from within Windows Mail: File, Export, Messages.
 
See www.oehelp.com/backup.aspx#wm and the section on WinMail. Just save the
eml files from the various directories. Then you can create a new folder in
OE and drag the eml files from Explorer and drop them on top of the OE
message list for that folder and they will be incorporated into the OE
message store. Alternatively, my OEX program (www.oehelp.com/OEX/) will let
you import from a directory of eml files into an OE folder with a single
button click. It also works to import into WinMail from OE's dbx files.

steve
 
When I try Export, Messages, it gives me a choice of Microsoft Exchange
or Windows Mail. Are you saying that WM's message format can't work
with Outlook Express?
 
Well, I hadn't seen the WinMail option under there. I tried it and it did
in fact export -- even the zero byte files in the inbox directory.

steve
 
Back
Top