Is your Outlook Express set up? If not, go to our Software Set-up Section first. Choose version 4.0 or 5.0 depending on which one you have. If so, continue with these instructions.

If you need to reinstall Outlook Express over itself, you will not lose your messages or address book. The actual program loads in C:\Program Files\Outlook Express while the messages and address book are located elsewhere. If you need to reinstall your hard drive due to a crash, then you would obviously lose your messages. If your messages are important to you may want to backup. There doesn't seem to be an easy way to backup your Outlook Express messages except to backup the folders in which they reside. The following screen shots show where you can find your messages and any sub-folders you may have.

Open Windows Explorer. Expand the Windows directory. Expand the Application Data Directory. Expand the following directories as shown in this view. Depending on whether you have added sub-folders to your inbox in Outlook Express, you may not have some folders which appear here. This is where Windows stores your personal settings for the internet and mail.

In this view, the outlook express folder highlighted contains the messages. From here you can backup these .dbx files to disk or burn to CD. It is a good idea to make a copy of the exact path to this folder from the folder Application Data. Simply highlight the path in the address bar of Windows Explorer and paste into a text document and save with your backed up messages.

In this view, the mail folder under outlook express contains the folders which are setup as sub-folders under inbox. Same as the other files, backup and save to disk or CD. Create a text file with the path to this folder in case you need to recreate it manually after a "Clean Install". After reinstalling the version of Outlook Express you had before, copy these files back into the exact location as before. Open Outlook Express and you should be good to go.