Outlook Express Account Backup & Restore

When I get a new hard drive, I partition it right away so that I have my operating system and most important programs on my C: drive. I keep the C: drive so that it is about 11 gigs. Then I partition the rest of the drives for Data and Work and whatever.

 

I have Norton Ghost make a backup of my C: drive every night. Whenever I get into a problem with my operating system, and this happens often, I just go back to my last Ghost backup and do a restore of that drive. Voilà! My computer is working right again. No need to troubleshoot and try to figure out what is wrong with the computer. I may do a ghost restore about once a week. I don't waste a lot of my time trying to fix computer problems. Sometimes going back one day isn't enough. Sometimes I have to go back many days to find a backup that fixes the problem.

 

As a heavy user of Norton Ghost to backup my computer hard drive, I have often wished that I had a way to backup and restore my accounts in my Outlook Express email program because, every time I do a Ghost restore, I go back to whatever accounts were in my Outlook Express at the time I made the Ghost. I have tried some commercial programs for backup and restore of Outlook Express but they all seem to have drawbacks or flaws in some way.

 

First of all, if you use Ghost, you are going to want to make sure that your Email Store Folder is NOT kept on your C: drive. Change the store folder to another drive so that, when you do a restore of your C: drive, you will still be linked to your email and not revert back to what you had when you made your Ghost. You can do that in Outlook Express with Tools / Options / Maintenance / Store Folder.

 

Please note that you follow these instructions at your own risk. Always make a full backup of your registry and make sure you know how to restore it just in case you mess something up here.

 

Now, here is how to do a backup of your Accounts for Outlook Express

Start Menu

Run

 

Type in regedit

 

Now you will look for this specific Path:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Account Manager

 

 

 

Now, with the Internet Account Manager selected,

go to File and then Export.

 

Find a place, not on your C: drive, maybe your Data folder, and save this partial registry backup file with a name that you will recognize.

 

Do this backup periodically so that you keep current. Do it as often as you can afford to lose information.

Here are instructions on how to restore these Account settings.

 

Go to your Start menu again, Run, Type in regedit

Then, in the Registry Editor, File / Import

Navigate to find your backup file and then import it into the registry.

 

When the import is complete, you will see a message that will confirm the import.