IT help pls

I work with my father (god help us all) and he would like to save his emails onto a memory stick. There are hundreds of them so i'd rather not do them 1 by 1. Is there a way to save the whole lot at once?

Had a quick Google and there is heaps of advise depending on which programs you are using.

OK - now I feel guilty that I am the only one who replied. If you want to put on what programs you are using and you need some Google searching done - get back on here and I will steer you in the right direction - if the chat room advise I read is correct.

Psst - I cleaned up a friend's computer some months ago and the first question I asked was how many of these 600 emails will you ever look at again. These were personal not business I might add. He agreed that he never went back - most of them being decidedly "rude" emails that men seem intent on sending each other so I had great fun getting rid of most of them. We are still friends!

lol thanks but i gave up in the end....just too damn hard! He is running outlook btw

No expert but I think you could probably use "Cntrl-A" (control, all) to select all the emails, right click and "Save As" and then select what you want to call the file, and where it is to be located (ie memory stick)? If you save them as .txt the file ought to open in almost any programme.

That's what I would do too, Prim.

I thought there might be a reply from one of the computer whizzes, who might know the proper way to do this. In their absence, I'll tell you what I do. (I'm using Outlook Express and I'm not sure if you mean that or really did mean Outlook.)

Before you start, make a new folder in the OE (right click on Inbox and select from the menu) and call it something like Dad. Once you've created it, click on it to open the folder - there won't be anything in it, but you need to have done that to activate it for later ...

Right click on START
Open and follow a chain of folders like this:
Documents and Settings
- User
-- Local settings
--- Application Data
----Identities (there seem to be Application Data folders all over the place, but you want the one inside Local Settings.

Open the Identities folders and you'll see {blahblahlotsofcharacters...
inside those folders (I seem to have more than one) will be Microsoft, then Outlook Express and it's that last folder which has the .dbx files in it. Look for Dad.dbx to ensure you're in the right place.

Now you can right click on any of the .dbx files and copy them onto the memory stick. (You'd want Inbox and Sent, probably.)

If you want to get them back sometime, you copy them back into the desktop and from there you can import the messages inside them back into the OE, or put the .dbx folders directly back into the OE file.

Thanks guys

You could email Grant directly if you like. He hasn't had time to drop into LSB much, as he's cleaning the Auckland house to sell, but I know he'd answer you if you emailed him.

He's transferred all my emails onto another computer at one stage, so I know he's had experience with that task.

You could use Thunderbird. It saves messages in the open mbox format, so you can move your mail to *any* computer. Furthermore, you can read the content of the email in any text editor. If you stick with Outlook you can only read them with another copy of Outlook.

www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/

A

After following Inger's advice for copying off (to back it up) the contents of my Outlook Express folder back when this thread was current I seemed to have created a path that my laptop used this afternoon to again back up the current file onto an external HD. Now a few hours later I revisit OE to find all mail folders empty but for 2 emails that had arrived minutes before [:0]

So, after searching LSB for this thread I have retrieved all the emails and copied them back into the OE folder so all is good again.

The question is: What prompted my laptop to empty its OE file? I did remove the external drive without shutting it down earlier but that does happen occasionally without this result :confused::confused::confused:

Organix;303621 wrote: After following Inger's advice...

It was Isla's advice actually...

No matter, it was very good advice too, exactly as I would have suggested [^]

Organix;303621 wrote: ...for copying off (to back it up) the contents of my Outlook Express folder back when this thread was current I seemed to have created a path that my laptop used this afternoon to again back up the current file onto an external HD. Now a few hours later I revisit OE to find all mail folders empty but for 2 emails that had arrived minutes before [:0]

The question is: What prompted my laptop to empty its OE file?

That is a definite worry. Outlook Express never backs up e-mails to an alternate location by itself, so either it was something you did, or else OE has run amok and corrupted the files. OE does have a "Compact Now" option, so I wonder if you ran that by mistake and something went wrong during the process :confused:

To make sure nothing is wrong, I would suggest checking the "Store Folder" location under Tools | Options | Maintenance. Make sure it is pointing to your C: drive, and not your external drive.

Organix;303621 wrote: So, after searching LSB for this thread I have retrieved all the emails and copied them back into the OE folder so all is good again.

Well done [^]

It shows the benefit of backups. I hope you haven't lost too many e-mails since the last backup date.

Organix;303621 wrote: I did remove the external drive without shutting it down earlier but that does happen occasionally without this result :confused::confused::confused:

No, I've never had any files become corrupted or missing without shutting down the drive. I generally do use the "Safe Remove Hardware" option, but I've never known it to matter. With Windows 7, it won't let you do the Safe Remove unless all Explorer windows referencing that drive are closed.