I have a mail archive from Outlook Express 5 in the form of a load of .dbx folders, an address book and also mail account details in .iaf files. I now would like to be able to import all this into Outlook (the one on the Office XP CD). It is not obvious to me how to achieve this, could anybody point me in the right direction please??

File, Import and Export, and then select Import E-mail account settings. That wizard will walk you through it. All you need to do it point it to the proper folder.

The thing is I have tryed this but it only seems to want to import existing settings in Outlook Express as it is setup now - ie not at all, this would mean restoring my email account in things up in Outlook Express first which not only seems pointless (as I'd rather use Outlook) but I don't really know how I would do that efficiently either. Is it just not possible to somehow transfer directly to Outlook with these files?

Perhaps you can select "Import from another Program" and select your archived files? If the file option isn't in the list, then try and export your archived OE data into a comma or tab separated file and then import that into Outlook.