Besides emails, the item that is most crucial in your Outlook Express mailbox is the contacts or ‘Address Book’ folder. This folder contains important and crucial contacts that you have collected. Therefore, along with the backup of emails, the backup of your Outlook Express ‘Address Book’ is also recommended. Mentioned below are the steps to create a backup of your Outlook Express Address Book:
- Open Outlook Express and select ‘Tools >> Address Book’ from the menu.
- Go to ‘Help’ and then ‘About Address Book’ from the menu of the address book.
- Highlight the path provided in the ‘File: box’ without including the name of the file. For example, ‘C:\Documents and Settings\user_name\Application Data\Microsoft\Address Book\user_name.wab’, then highlight only ‘C:\Documents and Settings\user_name\Application Data\Microsoft\Address Book\’.
- If your ‘About Address Book’ is not showing the ‘File: box’, then select ‘Run’ from ‘Start’ menu.
- There, type ‘regedit’ and click ‘OK’.
- Go to ‘HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\WAB\WAB4\Wab File Name’.
- Highlight the path of the ‘Default’ key as provided above.
- Press ‘CTRL+C’, and then click ‘OK’.
- From the ‘Start’ menu, go to ‘Run’.
- Press ‘CTRL+V’, and then click ‘OK’.
- Select your address book file (the file name provided in the ‘File: box’ above, which generally contains your user name) by right-clicking.
- From the ‘Context’ menu, choose ‘Copy’.
- On the Windows Explorer, open the folder where you want to place the backup copy.
- Click ‘Edit’, and then ‘Paste’ from the menu.
If your ‘Address Book’ file is very large, then the above mentioned manual process may take too much time. That means the process may be time-consuming for large-sized ‘Address Book’ folders. However, you need not worry, as the use of a professional mail backup software is recommended in such situations. A reliable mail backup utility takes the backup of your entire Outlook Express mailbox including the ‘Address Book’ file without taking much time. Most of these tools are easy to use and have highly interactive user interface so that they can easily be used by all, whether a professional computer user or a novice.
However, you may find some difficulty in choosing an efficient mail backup tool as there are many tools available online in this category. In such situations, you should opt for a software that has a free demo version and paid full versions. With the help of the demo, you can understand the software completely and if satisfied, you can then go ahead purchase its license. Generally, all efficient tools not only support Outlook Express, but MS Outlook and Windows Live mail as well.
It is recommended that you shouldn’t opt for a software that is completely free as freeware programs tend to possess malware or malicious software that can corrupt your computer instead of making backup of your mailbox data.
Jane Parker is a professional blogger and technology explorer, would love to write anything that she feels interesting or can helps user in understanding typical things in easy way. Currently she is doing research on various method to repair corrupted PST file and also analyses how to perform PST Recovery.
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sunnyson548
October 1, 2013 at 12:26 pm
I really loved the manual procedure which you mentioned, Peopel wont get confused how to navigate this outlook express. Movign files from one place to another is an simple way but the location which you allocate would become typical while doing task.
Russell Smith
October 15, 2013 at 6:24 am
It is a time saving mechanism over traditional methodology. It also encourages the user to take backup timely.
Grace Smith
October 30, 2013 at 3:36 am
It is very necessary to take backup of necessary outlook express address folder because any kind of file corruption or deletion can happen anytime. However we can take the backup by manual method but automated method is more efficient and reliable. I use Stellar Mail Backup software for taking backup of Outlook Express data.