The only essential difference between Outlook and Outlook Express, with respect to making backups, is that:

1. the "messages" folders have extension .dbx; and

2. you must separately backup your address book which has file extension .wab.

Use search to find "*.dbx" and copy the entire folder¹ containing your .dbx message files to another location. Do the same for *.wab. Use File|Import in OE to bring "archive store" emails back into OE.

Note that the .wab file cannot generally be imported into other email programs, so you should separately, in OE, click "File|Export|Address Book" and select "Text File Comma Separated Values" to save your address book in a form that can be imported into nearly all other programs. Do this if you use, or expect to use, any other programs. (The .csv file can actually be "read," with patience, in a text editor if everything else fails you.)

¹ Microsoft advises that you can copy individual .dbx subfolders from the location where you find your email messages, but many people report significant problems with re-importing stuff back to OE if this is done. Keeping the entire folder containing all the .dbx folders is recommended.

If you do decide to split off an individual .dbx file, you should create an empty folder with the exact name of the .dbx file (omitting the ".dbx" when you type it in the File|New|Folder box) in OE before you attempt to import it. This usually works, but no guarantees are made.

When you use (in OE) File|Import|messages, you have the option of importing individual folders back into OE, but you can't select individual messages. If the backup contains messages that are still present in OE, they will be duplicated – they will NOT overwrite the existing message, so arranging things in smaller folders before saving the email folder backup is recommended.

OE also provides the ability at "File|Save As to save individual messages, and you can choose to save either as "mail" (.eml) or as "html." As long as you expect to have OE available to reopen the individual messages, I'd stronly recommend using the .eml format rather than .htm, due to the "fragility" of html files/folders in storage as mentioned a couple of posts back.

To use the File|Save As method, you must do the messages one at a time – and you must provide a file name at the time of saving, since the filename will be the only thing identifying the message. A "mail file" (.eml) will overwrite an existing file with the same name. If you want to return an individual .eml message to your OE folders, you can just open the .eml file, right click on it, and use the "Move to Folder" button to store it back in your OE folders. So far as I've found, restoring .eml files must be done one at a time.

Attachments generally are preserved in the .eml file, so you don't have to save them separately.

Other email programs may use a different format for files "saved as email." When an email is "attached" to an email the attachment may have a "strange" file extension, with "mail" appearing fairly commonly from some of my correspondents. Usually if you save the attachment and change the file extension to .eml, OE will open it.

Some email programs appear also to make strange "changes" to the file extensions for other kinds of attachments, and often the same "change the file extension" will let you hit on the "real" filename that one or another of your programs will enter – but it takes a little luck sometimes.

John