Where did I put that address book?

[squeakmail]

Got a question for you gurus.

Recently lost contact with hard drive. Bought another. Repair shop installed both drives. New one (12Gb) as drive C - old (apparently not faulty after all) one as drives D,E and F (partitioned 5.2Gb).

Windows 98 running on drive C, W95 installed on drive D.

Now, I want to import my e-mails and address book (particularly the address book) from the drive D folders into the drive C folders in order to be able to reformat the D,E & F drive - but without losing the data.

Can anybody tell me, in simple English (one click at a time) how to do this? Explorer, I'm sure (and understand) but I cannot figure which files I need to move...they are just listed with nonsensicle names.

E-mail or reply....PLEASE!!!

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LIVE in peace...or REST in it!

[OzmateBugsmasher]

Which program are you using for eMail?

we may be able to help...

[squeakmail]

Outlook Express...as bundled with Office95.

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LIVE in peace...or REST in it!

[Lancman]

Open your new copy of Outlook Express, go to File\Import\Address Book, or Messages, and track down your old data. Click Import.

[Nishko]

Also, if you don't know what to import, go to 'find' files and search for any *.pst files. It will probably be called outlook.pst. Weired eh?

[squeakmail]

Thanks for the comments...I'm getting closer.

Found a few *.wab files that seem to fit the task..still haven't managed to move them - but, I'm getting closer.

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LIVE in peace...or REST in it!

[FL310]

Sorry, was a bit busy the last days but, here is what you want to read. If you follow these pints it will go easy and smooth.
Rob Vanderhaar is a crack on this subject and he wrote the following some time back:

Mail Recovery Techniques for Outlook Express


*** Additional help may be found on Eric Millers OE site ~ Outlook Express User Tips: http://www.okinfoweb.com/moe

*** Background * Locations & Names ***

The default location for mail on a single user system is c:\Windows\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook Express\Mail
-OR- search hard disk for Inbox.mbx

There is a subfolder for each user name on your system and then “mail” & “news” under that.

Each folder in Outlook Express has a *.mbx and a *.idx file on your disk. Mail messages are stored in the *.mbx files. and mail header info in the *.idx files

Five folders have default names and use the same base file name when seen in explorer.

• “Deleted Items” (.mbx & .idx)
• “Drafts”(.mbx & .idix)
• “Inbox” (.mbx & .idx)
• “Outbox” (.mbx & .idx)
• “Sent Items” (.mbx & .idx)

As you add custom folders they are assigned numbers with the format FolderOO.mbx (& idx) --FolderOl.mbx, etc. etc.

One other file in the mail directory is called “Folders.nch” it holds the custom folder names associated with folder00, folder01, etc. these associations are fixed at the time of folder creation or re-naming.

Tip: You can view the contents of *.mbx files with quick view to figure out what folder##mbx is equal to what custom name in OE. This association remains constant as long as the Folders.nch file is intact.

Before you do anything with a mail folder from OE you should compact the folders. From inside OE, close any open messages and click on any mail folder (not a newsgroup folder). From the menu bar at the top of the window choose File Folder I Compact all folders. A progress bar should show the folders being compacted. Deleted messages are finally cleared by this process and the mbx files are compressed.

Close OE before doing any restore, edit, or backup operations

Registry Pointers for Mail & News***

Moving Mail & News folders or changing location pointers requires a Registry change *** Backup registry first ““““‘

Close Outlook Express

Mail is stored in sets of *.mbx and *.idx files under your user name. See background for more info.

If desired, move the whole user folder (Parent plus Mail and News subdirectories) to the new location, then change the registry value.

Start regedit and find the key
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Outlook Express
The key “store root” controls the location of all your mail and Newsgroup folders.
Change the value of this key to point to your preferred mail location.

If you want to merge 2 existing OE mail structures see suggestions in blank folders restore method or export into messaging format


To Recover/Rebuild an existing folder in Mail ***

For existing folder in Outlook express (the folder exists but I cannot open it)

Easiest thing first - try and compact all the mail folders -

From any mail folder in Outlook express

File | Folders | Compact All


Next level of fix rename files using windows explorer. The following example uses INBOX as a reference but any other file name (e.g. sent items or folder99) may be substituted.

• Close Outlook Express. Open an explorer window on your mail folder, and delete the file Inbox.idx.
Restart outlook express and see if the files are rebuild. Note previously deleted files may appear. Delete these again and compact folder in OE to remove them.
• If the inbox will still not work, close OE again and return to explorer. Delete the inbox.idx file again and rename inbox.mbx to inbox.txt. Open OE and a new (empty) inbox will be created. You can open Inbox.txt with any text editor and at least read the text or you can try and restore it using the methods described for selective restore.

To attempt to recover previously deleted items you should also do the same for Deleted Items.idx and Deleted Items.mbx, since they might be contained in there.

Complete Restore /Recovery of all Mail folders ***

Note: this may destroy any existing mail in your current mailboxes. For selective mail restore see using blank folders or export to messaging methods.

To restore your old mailboxes, you need to copy all your *.mbx files into your active OE directory--just the *mbx files, NOT the *jdx files.

Note: If you overwrite any existing *.mbx files the existing messages will be lost. Also you should delete any *.idx files for the companion mbx you have overwritten.

Finally find a file called folders.nch in the existing mail setup and delete it; that’s OE’s list of all your special folder names. It will be recreated the next time you start OE, and will find your new mailboxes and include them also. OE will build new *.idx files for any copied files. All your mail folders will show up in OE but you’ll lose all your folder names (they’ll revert to folder000l, folder0002, etc.).

*** Selective Mail Recovery / Import into existing Outlook Express system

For OE versions up to 4.72.2 106.4 (= 4.01)

There is no import/export capability for Outlook Express to another version of itself. I don’t know of any official way to do this but here is a ‘work around’ with a few tricks and some set up --hopefully there will be an official way in an upgrade.

With previous ideas, you could restore but you would lose custom folder names. It was messy and not for everyday use. This may not be perfect but it works pretty smoothly.

Create dummy folders (files) using the current OE and import old messages by copying the old files to the dummy folder locations using explorer.

*** Method ***

In your current Outlook Express create new folder(s) (I used Recovery and/or Transfer00l, 002, etc). You can create multiple folders depending on your needs...
Optional -- take a draft mail message and change the title to match the folder name. Copy it over to the new folder(s) so you can look at them in explorer / quick view (next step).

I recommend you compact all the folders just to make sure they are nice and “tight” -
In OE from any mail folder (not News folders) File I Folders I Compact all
(a backup of your current mail may be useful during the first try outs).

Close OE and go out to Explorer and find the mail files -- Search *.mbx and use Quick View to see what folder##.mbx match the new names.

Note: The date in detail view may help and the new folders should have the highest number (Folder##.mbx) sequence, but not always.

Note the folder number(s) that you just created and are now going to use for the transfer.

““““‘ Setup is complete ***

To recover mail *** Import old mail file over to an existing mailbox

(Warning: For a tape backup be sure to restore files first to a temp folder and rename them as you move them into place in the existing OE framework -- do not overwrite your existing mail folders during tape restore or existing messages will be lost.)

1. Make sure that dummy /recovery folders are empty in OE -- they don’t contain any previously recovery items.
2. Close Outlook Express and go to MS Windows Explorer
3. Delete the Folder##.idx and .mbx for the empty recovery folder(s)
4. Copy the *.mbx files from your backup over to the recovery name(s) Folder##.mbx. You do not need the *.idx file but they can come along if you like. If it causes problems leave the idx out of the copy, it will be rebuilt by OE.
5. Start OE and you should have the new mail in the recovery folders with all your existing mail folders intact.

If this is a “one time” recovery you can rename your recovery folders in OE as you like they will still have the same Folder##.mbx file names

If this is a recurring process I would keep the recovery folders in OE (they will keep the same folder##) and drag mail to other folders as appropriate. You can empty the recovery folder in OE and then repeat steps 1 to 5 to recover other folders.

Tip: You can use shift or Ctrl with mouse for multiple select(s) and drag(s) of messages from recovery to other folders.


~ Export & Import Mail using to Messaging Format ***


The original post sought a way to transfer existing folders and messages from OE on one machine to OE on another. (Personally, I think it’s really poor that OE can import/export from everything but itself, but that’s another topic!)

Anyway, most of the solutions I’ve seen involve all kinds of “clever file tricks” and manual effort to try to reconstruct the environment. I did it a different way: I figured that if I could export the old setup into something that OE *did* know how to import, I’d be all set.

What I did is to select File/Export/Messages from my original OE setup, and picked “MS Exchange” as a destination. If you’ve never used Exchange before, you will probably not have an entry in the pull down menu for “Profile Name” that appears - so pick “New” to build a “Windows Messaging Settings” profile. (If “Windows Messaging Settings” is displayed, you can probably just use it.) If you do configure a new profile, just do the absolute minimum -- pick “manually configure information services” and don’t define any; and say “no” to having Exchange in your startup group, etc. Eventually the wizard will result in a new Profile.

Now just continue with the export. You will even be able to pick the specific folders you want to export, etc. After the export is done, the results are in one large file in your \Windows (or \Winnt if running NT) directory - the default filename (if you don’t override it) is OUTLOOK.PST. Now simply move that one file to the \Windows directory of your new machine.

Start OE and do a “File/Import”. Pick “Windows Messaging Settings” as your source, follow the prompts and it will recreate all your original folders and messages just like they were in the old system!

This whole process took about five minutes, and seems much cleaner/safer than all the manual file manipulations. Also, it’s an easy way to create a snapshot backup archive of your mail folders.

Rob Vonderhaar Boulder, CO

Added note from MS (3/98) -

If you get a message in Outlook Express like “Messages cannot import from Mapi client” -OR-Control Panel j Mail icon will crash with a strange error about “—not enough resources...” (Had me real confused for a while)

Go into Outlook Express | Tools | Options | General tab and
Uncheck the box “Make Outlook express my simple Mapi client...”

*** Edit Mail as Text Messages ***

Normal mail message files are transparent to text editors as they exist on your hard disk. Setup
may take a few minutes before you can edit or view with a standard text editor.
The mbx files are all the mail message files and correspond to folders in OE. If the folder you want to see is a default folder like ‘Inbox’ or ‘Sent items’, the file to folder connection is obvious. If the folder you wish to edit is a custom user folder, you must first figure out what Folder##.mbx holds your messages. Look at them with quick view to see which one it is and note the file name “e.g. folder99.mbx”...

Special Note: Mail attachments are included in the Mbx files but may be coded for mail transport (MIME encoding) and difficult to use with a text editor -- usually it is best to save these out separately with File Save Attachments - then forward the message, delete the attachment, resave to the folder you wish to edit from later.

*When you have a few messages and want to do a real edit *
Move (or copy) the folder##.mbx file out of the mail subdirectory using explorer

You can edit the file in any text editor (like wordpad or MS Word). If you name the file *.txt, a program may ask what you want to convert from – TEXT is OK…, resave as a 2normal” document in your favorite format(s). All the mail message header info will also be in there – I keep thinking I’ll make a macro to strip all that stuff out but haven’t taken the time yet, sorry.

Warning—you cannot put an edited folder back into the mail system. Once you edit it, ir is yours forever not Outlook Express.

If you move the mbx file out of the mail directory, it will be rebuilt (empty) when you next use in OE. The folder ##.mbx number will remain the same (as long as the folders.nch file is intact) so you can create a batch file to move/copy as you like. I have inbox assistant sort several mails into separate boxes and a batch file I run as needed to copy them all out to another directory for edits and resaves.

[squeakmail]

FL310...what can I say...apart from *&$@.

I'll print it out, read it, read it again, think about it...then try some of it.

Thankyou very much for the effort.

I'll let you know...but (as the saying goes) "I may be some time".

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LIVE in peace...or REST in it!