I'm attempting to backup all my O.E. messages in one go to my new external hard drive (160 gigs). I go via the Store Folder on my pc as instructed in the help section, but when I open the backed-up messages from the external drive I'm always shown the files that are currently on my pc's internal drive, not those I had hoped I had backed-up to my external one. ( I did buy a backup program - O.E Backup Genie - but that only allows me to backup and restore - it does not allow me to open the files from my external drive it seems, so this type of program is not what I require it would seem.)

>> I did buy a backup program - O.E Backup Genie - but that only allows me to backup and restore - it does not allow me to open the files from my external drive it seems << That's what most Backup applications do as the data is usually compressed to save space and sometime encrypted. Backups are never meant to be read as if they were live data, you do a restore for that. Stuart

I accept that the backup program I have bought will not allow me to do what I want to do, but should doing a backup using the "normal" backup facility, via my pc's Store Folder, allow me to open the backed-up files from my external drive?

Why not just "copy" the files from your computer to your external hard drive. Thats what i did...Then yo can take the external drive to any computer and use the files.

Yes, I do copy the files from my pc using the copy facility in O.E, (please forget about the program I mentioned I had bought -I know that will not do what I want so I don't use it at present). But when I open the files from my external drive, having copied the Store folder, what I see is not the messages I backed-up yesterday (or hoped I had backed-up) but the very latest set of messages that are now on my pc today. (Sorry if I should be talking of copying here rather than backing-up.)

Did you google for copy outlook files with windows explorer? There are many hits. Try it. i_Xp/VistaUser

OK, the issue is pretty simple. In OE there is a setting to determine the location of the "store" files - i.e. the data files that hold your email. There is a different store file for each folder in OE. The processes you are using are copying those store files to your external drive, (which is an acceptable backup). However, when you try to "open" those files Windows has the extension for those files as belonging to OE, so Windows launches OE. However, the settings for the location of it's store files is unchanged. So, you will still see the "current" messages on your machine. To see the messages in the backed up store files can be done, but will be problematic. You could either 1) change the settings in OE to point to the backed up files or copy the backed up files to your current store location (back up the originals if you don't want to lose them). But, doing that may be more trouble than it's worth. If you were to receive any new email while connected to the backed up store files, those messages would be saved there rather than the current store files. The full Outlook allows you to create archives and open those archives independantly of each other. I don't have OE on the computer I am using at the moment, but you might want to check any export functions to see if there are any options to export messages in a format that you can read. At the very least you can "copy" messages out of OE into a folder. Then each message is a separate file that you can open and view. Michael J