Exporting Outlook, Firefox Personal Settings

[Tosh McCaber]

I’m just converting over to a new computer, and have transferred most of the personal settings that I normally use. Several queries still outstanding:

1) My old Outlook email files. What is the best way to transfer them over- Export to a file, Copy them onto my external hard drive, and then Import them to the new computer? I’ve already got several files in the new computer, which I don’t want to lose.

2) My Outlook email Address Book. Where do I go to access the old address book, and how do I put it onto the new computer?

3) My Bookmarks, plug-ins and settings, in Firefox. Where do I go to access the old bookmarks, plug-ins and settings, and how do I put them onto the new computer?

[Bushfiva]

For Outlook, read up on .pst files.

[The Flying Pram]

For Firefox and Thunderbird there is a handy little programme called "MozBackup" (http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/). This will save a complete profile of each, and can be used to restore them, so I imagine you could do this on another P.C.

[Saab Dastard]

Outlook or Outlook Express?

Very different animals.

I know that this has been covered before - I've written about the user settings migration tool in XP. Perhaps a search (any date) on this forum will turn up some information.

Also see the MS site - there's a lot of good info there, reasonably comprehensible (it's written with the LCD in mind... the US LCD... :}).

SD

[Clutch Cargo]

I use Outlook 2007 and I am swapping information about once a week between my laptop and my desktop. I see there are several programs that let you keep both in "sync", but all I do is for example:

From my laptop let's say I

1. Do a file Export from within Outlook
2. I choose Personal File Folder (.pst)
3. I then select Personal Folders. I then check the box that says 'Include sub-folders'.
4. Give it a name and location to save. For me I always call my desktop Outlook1.pst and my laptop Outlook.pst just for convenience.
5. If I have an old pst file in the same location I either delete it or name it OLD or something. Reason being I always like a fresh completely new file, not one that is replacing or duplicating items.
6. Now I save the file. It can be large because I am saving all emails, contacts, the works. may take a minute. Mine is up to 500MB!
7. Then I do NOT import this into my Desktop (or for you your new PC). I merely find the location of my current Outlook.pst. For me the path is C:\documents and settings/Clutch/local settings/application data/Microsoft/Outlook. In there you should see a default .pst file create for your new Outlook or one you have been using.

I just delete mine and drop in the new one from my laptop. I fire up Outlook and everything is there. Good to go until I need to go back to my laptop.

May seem time consuming but it sounds like you just might be doing this just once to set up your new PC. Hope that helps.

[carholme]

Tosh;

What was the outcome with the memory problem you were having with the other computer over the holidays. Never heard back that it was successful.

carholme

[Tosh McCaber]

Thanks for reminding me. It turned out that this problem has been experienced by other people during automatic upgrading by Mozilla. It told me that I had to close another application- after a lot of investigation, Mozilla say that Spybot has a sub- application called TeaTimer, which has to be turned off when Firefox updates are being processed, although I’ve never come across this before. Anyway, having closed down and restarted, not only had I lost Firefox, but all my anti-virus programmes. My nephew, who does all my good technical stuff on my computers- his business is Deeside Computers (plug- although he doesn’t need it-he’s up to his neck in rural computer work!) suggested a virus, although I think that this was a side effect of the original problem.

BEWARE FIREFOX AUTOMATIC UPGRADES!!

I was in line for a new computer, and now have it, built by my nephew- state of the art! And reeaaally fast. Dual Core processor, a 200GB main drive, with two 400 GB secondary storage drives-(although, it will take some time to fill them! I seem to remember that my wife’s first 1989 Apple Mac SE had 20MB storage!!!) Fortunately, I have an old 80 GB hard drive, enclose in an E-Buyer portable caddy, and I’ve just about completed my transfer of data to the new drive. I found a definitive method of adding Bookmarks from a previous computer to a new one. Having carried out a bit of investigation, and from a Mozilla thread:

The fast and easy solution for Firefox bookmark recovery or transfer(W2K and WXP):
Bookmarks -> Manage Bookmarks -> File -> Import -> From File. Type "%APPDATA%" in the file field and press ENTER. This opens the "Application Data" folder. Go down into Mozilla, then Firefox and finally Profiles. This is the parent folder of your profile. You should see a folder called xxxxxxxx.default with xxxxxxx is any sequence of numbers and characters. Enter this folder, find the bookmark backups folder and enter it. Then select the newest or largest file (bookmarks-YYYY-MM-DD.html with YYYY is the year, MM the month and DD the day) and click OK/Open whatever.

Personally, I took a copy of my old Firefox Profiles over to the new computer desktop, and did the transfer from there.

[Tarq57]

I was intrigued by the link/application suggested by The Flying Pram, so installed it. It's one of those "all care, no responsibility" type applications, but appears to work a treat.
Give it a try. Might be easier than the procedure described above.