Backup HowTo

What a very nice, concise set of steps for doing a "brain transplant" of Outlook from one system to another, Naresh!

I've had to figure this out the hard way in the past but you've included some shortcuts that took what was usually a 45 minute process into about 10. Thanks again!

Mark

Thank you so much for your steps!!! It works very well.. hopefully there is also a method to include password as well....

Hi

I Have a computer with vista that dosent boot anymore, so I would like to know if there is any way to get my email setting from that computer by connecting that hard disk as second hard disk on a working PC,

thanks
Giuseppe
or please let me know which file conbtain the reigstry information with my email address

Hi, folder with e-mails is located at (for Windows Vista and Outlook 2007):

C:\Users\YOUR_USERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook

I recommend to copy these files to the new computer and using connect them to the Outlook. So you can see all your e-mail. However for e-mail settings (like POP3 servers or account names) this doesn't help. But I think it shouldn't be a big problem to set up again manually.

Hope this helps.

Well, the backing up with the registry is a fabulous idea, however, my pst file is on another drive and doesn't show up in the registry. Any suggestions? I have about 30 email accounts in my Outlook, and after a double-crash this past week, I NEED to back up the email accounts! It took 2 hours just to add them all back and then create all the rules and whatnot for them.

Thanks in advance

Hi, I think that PST files are one important thing and the registry entries are the second. Every acount settings is in the registry.

You can use a program call winternals erd commander. You need to download it and then burn the image to a cd as a bootable image. Boot to the cd and then you will then be able to boot to the non bootable hard drive and recover your data as if tou were actually in windows. You can read about and download ERD commander here
http://www.keshzone.com/2007/10/winternals-erd-commander-2005-ready-for....
Trust me it works great. Best tool to have.

Hi Friend,

Thanks for the Information.. We will try this in our coming article and thank you so much for your suggestion.

Naresh

Hi,

Nice article! However, I cannot seem to get this to work - and I have two separate mail accounts, my own and my wife's in the same programme (profiles?). I had a hard drive failure and have had to rebuild the PC. Luckily, I have the full OUTLOOK folder with all its PST files in a backup location on a second drive.

I copied all this to the same location on the nwly built C: drive after re-installing Office 2007 Standard Edition (which includes Outlook 2007) only to find that Outlook still wants me to supply full email/settings details when I open it! As I said, i ad two users - me and my wife. The Outlook user folder has four PST files - Outlook.pst0, 1, 2 & 3; 1 archive file and 3 .obi files - Carolyn.obi, lee.obi and ~last~.sharing.xml.obi I have placed all these back into the new Outlook 2007 installation but I cannot access the programme without having to re-create the accounts (I have set two new profiles using the MAIL option in CONTROL PANEL

Can anyone walk me through how to just restore Outlook 2007 as it was with my two accounts and email? It should not be this difficult to do it! I have finsihed setting up the whole PC (2 days work) but Outlook seems to want to really test me! thanks for any help you can be.

Cheers,

Lee

Hi Lee,
do you have export of the registry mentioned in the article above? If not, you have to setup e-mail account manually.

However it is possible to get all your e-mails from backup files. Just create the account in Outlook at first. Then close the Outlook and overwrite its files with your backup.

You could also connect your backup PST files as the secondary storage via Account Setings|Data Files. This will make possible to view all your older e-mails.

Hope this helps.

Jan

Hello Jan,

I have a full backup of the C: drive as it was before the failure. It is stored as an image file by Acronis True Image backup software - and I can mount the drive backup using TI to use the contents.

The reason the rebuild took place was because TI would not restore the C: Drive Image back to the newly install operating drive! the backups were not corrupt or damaged in any way - I can mount them ! - but the restore would not work. so I had to rebuild from scratch! That is now done and all working - except Outlook! I'd rather not re-do my email account settings for both of us if I don't have to. I do have Registry backups in the old C: drive backup archive (I use CCCleaner so I make backups of the Registry every time I use it) so could I export the settings out of one of them? and then import them into the current Registry?

Thanks for your help,

cheers,

Lee

Yes, if you will be able to get the needed part out from the backed up registry file, then it should help.

Your article is very interesting to me so I like that so much and Thanks you

How do you restore the registry key to get your accounts back in? Import?

Thanks

Double click the REG file and confirm.

After doing that registry thing you need to go to control panel:

- Click on Mail
- Click on 'Show Profiles'
- Select 'Prompt for a Profile to be used'

I am sure it will work for you as it worked for me.

Thanks.
Tariq

I have been going crazy trying to figure out how to backup my email accounts (I have 12 of them) so that I would not have to manually set each account on my other PC.
I just tried what you suggested and it worked like a charm. All I need to do now is set the passwords for each account.

The .pst file was easy all I had to do was go to File> Import and Export> Highlight Export to a file> Next>Highlight Personal Folder File (.pst)> Next> Highlight Personal Folders> Checkmark Include subfolders> Next> Browse to assign where to backup> Finish> Password Protect if you wish> OK.
That's how I backup my Outlook.pst file.

Again thank you very much! Great work!

thanks mate, you saved my life! may good karma goes your way!

I bought a new hard drive for my PC, I backed up all the data that I thought was important. My docs, my pictures, desktop files, ect. I reinstalled windows on my new hard drive and couldn't work out how to get my Outlook data back. Thankfully after reading this, and keeping the data on my previous hard drive I have found my PST file and seamlessly transferred the data across. Thank you for ending my headache. This post is now bookmarked for future reference!

I remember once losing everything in my inbox--aaarrrggg.

Well, I use a Mac now.

I followed your instructions carefully. However, after doing everything I still have no Email accounts in the new PC. Importing the .PST file is easy but I have 63 Email accounts and setting them up manually takes a long time, so I really want this to work. I saved the correct REG file from the old PC and imported it exactly where it's supposed to go but when I expand one of the sub-folders it doesn't contain all the files as they are in the old PC and when I open Outlook they're not there, even after i reboot.

Any suggestions?

It worked for me. What do you mean by sub-folders? Registry keys?

Used the procedure you describe and it worked like a charm. Before I hit your site I looked around searching for an answer to that question. It's incredible that there are commercial solutions around while it is all in the system - if you know where. I would have felt stupid entering 8 accounts with a partly tricky setup again. On the other hand, why pay $25.00 - 30.00 for a program you use only once in a couple of years when you set up yor system anew or buy a new machine?

So, again, thank you very much for your insight and the greatness to make your knowledge public .

The text under the picture of Registry editor make no sense me. You talk about .pst - files, but you don't get that from the registry editor. You'll get a reg-file.
What do you to get this right?

The backup/restore of accounts in Outlook 2007 is NOT easier - its harder!
Old Outlook had its own export/import of the accounts that you could save as seperate files, as an iaf-file for each account. Then you could import the accounts into another Outlook to be used there. In that way you could made a backup of each account.

A warning about pst-files: Do NOT make a copy (backup) of a pst-file while Outlook is open. Your backup will fail and be of 0-byte!

Thanks.

Hello Ole, thanks for your suggestion. You are right. There should be a text about REG files. I edited the article.

Thank you very much - it was very useful for me.
Thanks for taking time to share.

First of all, nice info provided..Recently i formatted my pc.Due to which i later reinstalled my outlook.I have .pst file of my old mails.However, when i do send recieve, all my old mails are duplicated.Is it possible to just get mails which are not there in my outlook?Is there any way to avoid duplication of mails.I had not backupd my profile.I had previously just backuped my .pst file.Expecting your reply at earliest.Thanks in advance.

Hello, I think the problem is that you have all your e-mails stored on the mailserver. So after "Send/Receive all" these e-mails are copied to your computer. The only chance how to avoid the duplicates is not to use the backup and receive the e-mails from mailserver. Or, delete all on your mailserver and use the backup.

Maybe the Duplicate Email Remover should be useful for you.

This info about copying the registry information is pure gold. Never have heard any mention of reg files associated in the Outlook transfer process. THanks a bunch man

It might or might not be of importance but on various occasions it proved pretty usefull to also backup the .NK2 file located in drive:\Documents and Settings\user name\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook folder.

NK2 file is the autocomplete name list which is used when typing an address in outlook.

Cyberling

Hi,

This is a good article. My only question is how can I backup and restore all the email rules I have (so i can restore them when I use your article to backup and retore outlook.

Thank you, and keep up the writing!

Thank you very much you saved me a lot of time.

I didn't expect this to work as I was copying from Outlook 2007 on XP to Outlook 2007 on Vista.

Live long and prosper.

When using:
Backup/Export Account Settings - Outlook 2007

I found out to reverse adding additional email accounts, one must delete each one, rather than installing an alternate .reg file.

Using a scheme involving the feature above, I did find out a good way to forward my work emails normally recieved on my laptop, by transferring these accounts to my desktop, for when I travel. I then made a rule to forward all work emails from my desktop at home to my cell phone. I set these accounts to not delete the messages from the server, so I could get them all back on my laptop when I returned.

This bit of work allowed me to use an unlimited e-mail feature for an extra $5 a month, rather than getting a smartphone or blackberry, and an additional data plan onto my voice plan.

If you are interested in doing a reinstall of outlook 2007, or wanting to move your outlook "ALL Your Settings", Including Accounts and Rules and pst's and archives, in one swell swoop. Migwiz worked for me.

On your computer with outlook 2007 email files, open migwiz from the 'run' command (Migration Wizard).
Select "Old Computer"
Select "other" for the transfer method, and select a storage location.. preferably on the target computer you are wanting to restore outlook to.
Select "Setting Only"!!! (believe me when I say it will copy the pst files and registry settings)
Select "Let me select a custom list of files" !!!! very important.
Remove everything except "Microsoft Office"
Thats it, allow to finish.
Then go to target computer.
Run MigWiz
Select "New Computer"
Select "I don't need the Wizard Disk"
Browse to the location of the saved migwiz file from above.
Finish.

When done, you will have an exact replica of your Outlook 2007, email, archives, accounts and rules.
Made me happy.

Regards
JimG

Thanks for your tutorial Jim!

I tried to do exactly this. Both PCs run XP SP3 and Office 2007. When running migwiz (datestamped 3 Aug 2004) MS Office does not appear in the list of settings that one can choose from. This is not supposed to happen but it does. Searched on the net for a solution but could not find any explanation. Are there different migwiz.exe versions ?

It has worked so well!!!! pity that passwords are not there, but it is so simple, easy and time saving...

Sometimes Internet gives a real help on this sort of needs.

Keep well and thanks for the help

Actually, yes you are right. I ran into this same issue on another migration.
What has happened here is that the steps shown were from a computer that had Outlook 2003 upgraded to outlook 2007. When the XP version of Migwiz is run, it finds the Outlook 2003 references in the registry, which are also used by 2007 outlook. I started to work on a custom ini file for this, but found another solution.
If you can find a copy of a Vista cd. Look in the ..\support\migwiz folder and run migwiz from the Vista CD. Migwiz from this cd was able to find the Outlook 2007 files. The steps are not exactly as stated in this thread, but you should be able to adjust accordingly.
I did not dig on the Microsoft site to see if there are any latest/greatest migwiz updates for Xp.

Regards
JimG

Hi,

i can follow the registry string till: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\
the folowing does not exist:
Windows Messaging Subsystem\Profiles\Outlook

i am running win Vista and i did that things before on same PC and OS. strange but the rest of the string is symply not there. any ideas?

thanks

Dave

THANX!!!!

I was looking for a solution of this problem already for awhile and he it is!
it worked great for me!
thank you very much.

keep it up!
the outlooker

Hello everyone, here is my version of the problem...

I upgraded to Win7 yesterday and moved my .pst file to the correct location. I have everything up and running exept my account info. Now I can't access the registry since I have upgraded the OS. However, the installation put all my old windows files into a folder called Windows.old. Is there any way of retrieving the account information from that folder, which seems to have all the old system files intact?

Best wishes,
Bragi

Hello,
Windows registry files should be located in files named system.dat and user.dat. So using a special registry editor working offline with registry files should helps you. However I couldn't remeber which software is able to do it :-(

I took the backup of Outlook 2007 using the Export Option, and after the 4th of the backup I upgrade my system with Windows 7. Now in this window 7 again I restore the outllok 2007 backup .pst file.
My problem is that I can't see all the mail in outlook which I receive in between the Backup date and Restore Date.

can Anyone help me on that.

Hi Guys,
MigWiz is a good way to transfer all your outlook settings and email accounts to the new computer, BUT it does not import settings from Windows x64 to Windows x86 (32 bit). It says cannot transfer settings from Windows 64 bit to Windows 32 bit. Be very careful.

If you have this situation, then try the registry backup method. That works. Except, that you will have to have the same data paths for the .pst files.

Have Fun,
Harpreet

Hi, thanks for your experience with MigWiz.

This is free duplicate remover will get the job done http://www.vaita.com/ODIR.asp and even works on win7 x64. enjoy

great result - best solution i came accross

I have to change my outgoing mail settings in outlook 2007 depending whether I am working out of one location or another. Normally I work using an ATT DSL setup, so my outgoing email is through the sbc server. But when I work in another office with a comcast connection, everything sends fine, but @hotmail.com and other microsoft email addresses reject my email and will not deliver it, because I am on a comcast connection but sending through SBC.

Thus I have to change my outgoing server, username and password back and forth between the two.

Is there a way to backup these settings, restore the other, and vice versa depending where I am working?

This should helps you I think.
http://www.outlookpower.com/issues/issue200403/00001248001.html

http://windows.ittoolbox.com/groups/technical-functional/ms-exchange-l/s...