BACKING UP YOUR MOST IMPORTANT
E-mail messages are excellent tracking devices. Each contains a subject heading, the date and time that it was sent or received, and the name and contact information of the sender. Consequently, you can use e-mail messages as receipts, as proof that certain conversations took place, and as chronological records. All you have to do is save them and then back up your files as a safety procedure just in case your hard drive fails.
If you receive dozens of email messages each day, it is probably true that you will not want to backup all of them. Therefore, you will want to select those important messages that you wish to retain for safe keeping and store them in a special folder within Outlook Express.
Follow these steps to select your important sent and received messages:
1. Open Outlook Express.
2. In the Folders column (pane) on the left side, right-click on Local Folders.
3. Move down and select New Folder.
4. In the Create Folder dialog box, type Important Messages and click OK.
5. Note that you now have a new folder in the left column called Important Messages.
6. Now click on each of the local folders (Inbox, Outbox, Sent Items, Deleted Items, Draft, etc.) that might contain a message that you wish to keep. Clicking on a folder in the left pane will cause that folder to populate the right pane with the messages that are stored there.
7. When you find a message that you wish to designate as an Important Message,
right-click on it.
8. Select Copy to Folder, then select Important Messages, and finally click OK.
9. Follow steps #6-#8 to place all your designated messages in the Important Messages folder.
Note: This can also be accomplished by using the “Drag & Drop” process. This is done by placing the cursor on the message you wish to put in a folder, press and hold the left mouse button while dragging it to the selected folder...and then drop it into the folder by releasing the mouse button.
Relocating Your Message Store Will Simplify Backup
By default, Outlook Express creates a set of message storage files (called the Message Store) in a deeply nested folder.
To move your message store to a place where your backup routine can more easily find it, follow these steps:
1. As a preliminary step, create the folder that you want to use for your main message storage. For example, you could create a nested folder called My Email Messages inside your My Documents folder. (Open your My Documents folder; right-click on a blank area; left-click on “new”, then on “folder”; name the folder My Email Messages)
2. From the Outlook Express tool bar, choose Tools, then Options.
3. On the Maintenance tab, click Store Folder.
4. In the Store Location dialog box, click Change to open the Browse for Folder dialog box.
5. Select the new store folder (My Email Messages) that you created in Step #1.
6. From this point forward, your current email message files will be stored here.
Now, for creating a backup file folder for safe keeping, you can copy the Important Messages file that is now located in the My Email Messages folder and paste it to another medium [a zip disk, a floppy (if there is room), a Thumb Drive, or another hard drive]. If you have a CD-RW drive, you will be able to “burn” the file to a compact disk. It is important that you perform this Copy and Paste function on a regular basis; otherwise, the file that contains your important email messages will not be kept up-todate.