Backing Up or Moving Microsoft Outlook

By Scott McManus

When it comes time to format your hard drive, move to a new computer or if you just want to back up all of your Outlook functionality that you have invested a lot of time into then you need to follow these critical steps.

The PST file.

You can either copy your original file (which is stored in different places on different windows operating environments.) If you do not know where to find this file then you can either

Do an export to a pst file. It is important that you export from the personal folders item in the outlook folders tree. This way all of your calendar, Contact, Task and mail Items and folders will be included.

Or

You can make sure that hidden and system files are shown in the folders view options of My Computer. Then search for this file ‘outlook.pst’.

Or

Look in Outlook Options on the Tools menu.  Choose Mail Setup ... Data files.

Importing

On your new machine you simply Import from the PST file you have and all of your items and folders are ready on your new machine or reformatted machine.
 

***Warning*** You are only half way there!!

You still need to export/import your accounts and your Rules Wizards.

Mail/Other Accounts

You create *.IAF files form the account management section of outlook, there is a nice clear button that says Import/Export and many of you probably know where this is. However the Tricky bit is with Rules.

Rules Wizard

If you are like me, you have developed many and complex rules to deal with junk mail, sorting mail from colleagues, work and personal sources into folders or simply deleting unwanted email.  The import/export function for rules is one of the better hidden resources in Outlook. To find it you need to go to the Rules Wizard then select Options

Now you can import/export your rules. The file created has the *.RWZ extension. This will export all of your rules, in the order that they exist now.  When you import, there is no matching of rules to see if the same rules exists as happens with mail or calendar items with the PST import, so if you import your rules twice you end up with two of every rule. Import again and you get three of every rule!