Help me please... I can not locate my emails and address book and I need to back them up urgently....

Over the last few years email has become for many people the normal way of communicating with friends and family. It also is a major source of commercial contacts, software subscriptions, mailing lists and, if businesses are involved then perhaps contracts and agreements.

The simplicity of email with attached files and photos make it a very attractive, convenient and instant method of communication. All of this is gone if the important emails with attached files and photos are lost due to a Hard Drive failure or Computer theft.

The need to backup important files on your Computer is not widely understood.
It is the data files (your data files) which are the most important and perhaps irreplaceable files that need to be backed up..  Backup is the action of copying these important files to another location such as a USB memory stick or CD writer.

Whilst the location of your Microsoft Office documents and accounting or genealogy files are easily determined the location of the data files for email remain for many users difficult to find. The following details are for email and address book locations in Windows XP..

Microsoft Outlook Email (a component of Microsoft Office) the location is usually ......

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\*.pst

.....where <username> is the logon name of the current user and  *.pst where * is an unknown name but the file will end in the .pst extension. The contacts, mail, tasks and calendar are all contained within the .pst file.

The most widely used email program is Microsoft Outlook Express and this is the one that we will now examine. The email is usually located in the following default..

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Identities\{within these brackets are a series of letters and numbers}\Microsoft\Outlook Express\

....where <username> is the logon name of the current user.

The default location of your email address book is ...

C:\Documents and Settings\<username\Application Data\Microsoft\Address Book\ *.wab

....where <username> is the logon name of the current user and  *.wab  is an unknown file name but will end in the .wab extension.

The exact location on your Computer can be determined as follows.

Within Outlook Express mail use the menu bar... Tools | Options | Maintenance | Store Folder .... and note the location given..

For your address book ... Open the Address Book with the Toolbar Icon and then select .. Help | About ... and note the location.

You may simply navigate once to these two locations and make them favourites so as to easily find them the next time you wish to back up or, as we shall see now, move the defaults to a more simple location.

A better location for the email data files maybe something such as C:\Email with your address book located within a subfolder C:\Email\Address. If you wish to change the locations firstly create the folder and subfolder as above.

Next.. to change the email data location open Outlook Express and using the menu bar... Tools | Options | Maintenance | Store Folder | Change .... navigating to your newly created folder C:\Email. You will need to close Outlook Express and restart it for the location of your data files to be changed and the files actually moved.

To change location of the address book requires a registry modification which is tricky for many users so following is a simple 'automated' option.

Firstly open the Address Book with the Toolbar Icon and  select .. Help | About ... and note the name of your wab file..

Next open Notepad and copy into Notepad ALL the text below (between the dotted lines BUT not including the dotted lines... Then modify the wabpath on line 3 to reflect your desired location for the address book AND the exact name of YOUR wab file.

Save the file as WABpath.vbs.

Navigate to the default existing location of your address book *.wab and then move the *.wab file to your newly created desired location..

Double click the WABpath.vbs file and your address book location is now instantly changed via the registry.

Open the Address Book with the Toolbar Icon and then select .. Help | About ... and check the location has changed to your new value.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("Wscript.Shell")

'Edit the next line to show your path and filename between the quotes.

wabpath = "C:\Email\Address\DosDoctor.wab"

' This writes your path to the registry, then confirms.

WshShell.RegWrite "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\WAB\WAB4\Wab File Name\", wabpath
MsgBox "The default Address Book has been changed to" &vbCR & wabpath, 4096, "Confirmation"

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Now when you need to backup your email messages and address book you have them in a simple location which is easy to find.

That's it .... so simple really but so necessary in today's world of email messaging and avoiding the anguish when some important emails are lost...