Hi My old laptop is now reduced to a heap of scrap but I salvaged the working hard drive. I thought I was home free!! Now I realise I've lost (or hopefully just can't find) my old Addresses, Mail Rules, and Accounts for Outlook Exress. There are no .wab files on the old HD. There are one or two .iaf files but they are long out of date. I understand that OE uses the Registry for these things ... I've read an old thread at http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] s-registry and found the XP Registry (thanks), but I would really appreciate some simple steps to follow to get at my old Mail Rules, Accounts and Addresses and restore them. I've never tinkered with the Regstry before, but as it's just the old one on the now external old HD I have some new confidence! Thanks in advance sincerely robin

If you're not booting to the old drive you won't be able to access its Registry. Your address book should be here: C:\Documents and Settings\userid\Application Data\Microsoft\Address Book Your mailboxes would be here: C:\Documents and Settings\userid\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{IdentitySid}\Microsoft\Outlook Express (You'll need to take ownership of the Documents and Settings folder to access the data there.) The rules and accounts are indeed stored in the Registry, so unless you backed up those settings, they're inacessible, and you'll have to recreate them. "So won’t you give this man his wings What a shame To have to beg you to see We’re not all the same What a shame" - Shinedown

Hi Jennifer and thanks, brilliant!!!! Address book imported with ease. If I want to keep the old addresses do I need to save both the wab~ and the dat files or just the wab one? Can I ask you to clarify two small things? Your second link drew a blank. Is this because I've changed the Store location? In roughly the same place you list is an mst file and that's about it. But I'm not really sure what a mailbox is ... :( I didn't understand it where you wrote: "(You'll need to take ownership of the Documents and Settings folder to access the data there.)" Anyway, the bottom line is that I've got to set up all the accounts and rules again from scratch! :( A lesson learned. There's some good pages at MS on backing up OE if anyone reading this is spurred to do the necessary to avoid finding themselves in my situation: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/270... and here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/276... Thanks again Jennifer sincerely robin

The wab should be sufficient as far as the addresses go. If you changed the location of the Outlook Express data, then it will be located wherever you had it stored. The Documents and Settings permissions normally allow only that particular user and Admin access. If you're accessing the drive from another computer, normally you'd receive an "Access denied" error when attempting to navigate through the profile (Documents and Settings folder) for that user from the other XP load. You can always copy your rules and, messages, and address book. Steps to follow are in the Outlook Express Help. Glad I could be of assistance. "So won’t you give this man his wings What a shame To have to beg you to see We’re not all the same What a shame" - Shinedown

Hi Jennifer I can't find anything in the OE Help that covers anything except the messages themselves. Is there another, simpler, way of backing up Rules and Accounts? The address book is easy (now you've pointed it out!), I'd simply forgotten to regularly include it in my back up (doh!). Messages are a doddle to include in backups just by changing the Store location somewhere sensible (ie into a high level folder that I always back up). It would be great to be able to backup Rules and Accounts without all the RgEdit cleverness. sincerely robin

I always check the MSKB first: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/270670 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/276511 This looks promising: http://www.abf-soft.com/outlook-exp... "So won’t you give this man his wings What a shame To have to beg you to see We’re not all the same What a shame" - Shinedown

Yes, the ABF software sounds interesting. Thanks. The other two links were the ones I posted earlier here. It's good to find out I'm not as stupid as I seem! The ABF solution is a billion times easier. Thanks again sincerely robin