Manually backup / export Outlook Express messages

Since Outlook Express for some reason has no decent export function (unless you count the export to Outlook function decent) it is necessary to manually backup your e-mails.

You can just drag and drop them out to a folder, but that's annoying, and takes more time and effort than should be necessary. Besides, we want to backup everything inside of Outlook Express exactly as it is. Addresses, e-mails, everything.

Surprisingly, this is easy to do. In Windows 2000 and XP the database files for OE are in

Documents and Settings\*username*\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\ {FDC226AF-4554-4CF0-9CF7-FA2F7C3CF969}\Microsoft\Outlook Express

in Windows 98/ME they are in

WINDOWS\Application Data\Identities\{D55BB9C0-12C3-11D7-AD3A-C4A8671A7A3C}\ Microsoft\Outlook Express

Copy all of the files in this directory. Burn them to a CD or whatever. When you want to import them back into your new OE install, or if your just moving them to a new machine, all you have to do is copy the files into the same directory. NOTE: the {D55BB9C0-12C3-11D7-AD3A-C4A8671A7A3C} part of it will be different on every machine. Just let it overwrite everything in the directory. If there are any messages in Outlook Express already, they will be overwritten.