McG -

I'll agree that it can be a puzzle. I've been through about every mistake you can make on the email thing.

To save an address book, you really should "export" it, although you can just copy it "as is" and you probably will be able to get it back. If you export directly from the OE "File" tab, it will assume you want to send the address book to the "default mail client," and if you're in your default program, it will fail.

If you click on the "Address" tab at the top of OE, and then select File - Export on the Address Book header, it will let you pick a folder - anywhere on the machine - to put a "copy" of the Address book. Put the copy on a backup CD, and if you need it back, use the File - Import - Address Book thing.

You can just copy your email folder to a backup CD, but it's important that you get the whole folder since it's easy to miss the index file if you try to backup just one or two "subs." Don't try to "save" just the Inbox or just the Sent Items or any other separate folder. Save the entire email folder every time.

When you recover a backed up addy book, you should do an "import," although sometimes you can get by with just copying it into where OE expects to find it. If you just copy, OE sometimes gets confused about which address book it's using. If you import, it can handle it much more easily.

A "working" email or address book can be "imported" from another machine, or from another "user space" on the same machine, but OE has to be "closed" on the machine you're getting it from. When you do it this way, the "working" files look just like a backup copy.

Most of the problems stem from OE files being database files, with a separate index file to keep track of where the individual messages are in the database. If the index file gets "separated" or "out of register" with the data files (the folders, like Inbox, etc.) then the information may be there, but can't be recovered. OE can't do a normal "import" if the index file is missing - unless there is an identically named folder already in the OE you're importing to.

Sometimes, even if the index file is gone, you can get an import if you create a folder in OE with the folder name identical to the file you're trying to import, or rename the one you want to import to the identical name of a folder that's already in OE. OE will attempt to "rebuild" the index as it adds individual data items. If you have .dbx files anywhere on your machine that don't show up in OE, you can try making a "New Folder" in OE, with the folder name identical to the filename of the .dbx file (without the .dbx extension), and then try to import. It often works.

I do a periodic Address Book export to keep a good backup on hand.

With typically 1500 email messages "active" and with over 8,000 in "current backups," the requirement that you backup and retrieve "whole folders" is unworkable, so I simply save (File, Save As) each individual message as a .eml file when it's received. It takes a lot more space to save them this way, but that space is mostly on backup CDs. And I can recover any individual message one at a time from the backups, just by clicking on it.
(Just be sure to name the files carefully and keep a good index.)

It's not surprising that people have problems with getting good backups and with recovery from backup. I've checked the Win98, Win2K, and WinXP Resource kits specifically, and each has at least 80 index entries for "backup." The words "Restore," "Recover," and any other euphemism/variation I've been able to think of, do not appear in any Index in any Reference Material published by Microsoft.

John