Gary B said in news:
[email protected]:
Is there any way to back up my email groups? As it is,
they have to be re-entered if I lose data. Surely there is
some provision for this??
Since you made no mention of your version of Outlook, I picked the one
that I have: Outlook 2002 (as part of Microsoft Office XP). I also had
to assume that you are *not* using MS Exchange as your mail server. To
backup the _data_ from Outlook (i.e., folders), see the following KB
article:
OL2002: How to Back Up, Restore, or Move Outlook Data
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=287070
For future reference, you can do such searches yourself by visiting
http://support.microsoft.com. Also, for future note, always include the
version of any product you are asking about. Different versions can
have different feature sets. You could also download the Personal
Folders Backup plug-in for OL200x from Microsoft and have it scheduled
when to backup your information store.
If instead you meant how to save the e-mail account settings, something
not included above, then see the methods mentioned below. None of the
backup methods for Outlook, nor using PFB, will save your e-mail account
settings. That is because the e-mail accounts are defined in your mail
profile which is separate of any e-mail client. The methods below are
what I use but there may be other methods. I definitely wouldn't go pay
someone for a solution that is free and also very easy. The following
assumes you are using Windows 2000/XP (might work for Windows NT4).
Don't know what environment variables might be defined under Windows
9x/ME. You also never mentioned which version of Windows that you use.
***** Method 1: Save the mail profiles from the registry
Run the following command:
%windir%\regedit.exe /e
"D:\USER\%username%\Outlook\Backups\MailProfiles.reg"
"HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows
Messaging Subsystem\Profiles"
This is all on one line. regedit.exe is probably in the path but I
always like to specify a full path so I know exactly which copy gets
executed should there be two, or more, files by the same name (I sure
wish Windows had the equivalent of Unix's 'whence' command). Define a
shortcut using the above command and label it "Backup All My Mail
Profiles". The backup path can be anything you want. Mine is under
"D:\USER\<myusername>". Quoting of parameters is unnecessary if there
are no spaces, but your backup path could have spaces in it, especially
since the username could have spaces. The registry key definitely has
spaces. The syntax for exporting a key using regedit from the command
line is:
regedit /e <outfile.reg> <regkey>
I found the syntax for regedit at
http://snipurl.com/6drq. This will
save all mail profiles defined under your account. That's because it
saves the registry key under the HKEY_CURRENT_USER registry hive.
Trying to save everyone's mail profiles would entail getting their SID
for their account and then saving the following key:
HKEY_USERS\<accountSID>\Software\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem\Profiles
But there's no way in just a single command to do this. So just put the
shortcut in the Microsoft Office XP group in the start menu under the
All Users group. The backup will go under their name because of the
%username% environment variable. Or, instead of using %username% in the
path of where to store the file, you could just name the file using
their account name, as in "<path>\%username%_MailProfiles.reg". I use
the path because I have configured permissions on it similar to those
for my %userprofile% (so only I and administrators can get at my
personal files).
***** Method 2: Using the Save Settings Wizard
"The Save My Settings Wizard in Office XP replaces the previous
Microsoft Office Profile Wizard in Microsoft Office 2000 for saving the
user preferences and settings of a Microsoft Office program." from
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=280905.
I have MS Office XP. A subfolder named "Microsoft Office Tools" got
created in the start menu group for "Microsoft Office XP". There you
will find the "Save My Settings Wizard". This will save the settings
for all components of your current install of Office (it checks what
components have been installed). It does not let you select what
settings to save nor let you select the components (Word, Outlook,
Excel, etc.) for which you want to save settings. So presumably the
restore of the .ops file will overwrite your settings for all components
rather than let you just recover those you want and keep your current
settings in place and safe for the other components.
HOW TO: Use the Save My Settings Wizard to Back Up Settings in
Office XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=312978
Although the above KB article doesn't mention that the e-mail account
information gets saved, I looked in the generated .ops file and found
strings equal to my e-mail addresses. I have not yet had need to use
this .ops file to restore my settings (mostly because I forget that I
made one), so I cannot guarantee it includes the mail profiles. I did
see the "Windows Messaging Subsystem\Profiles" string (interspersed with
period characters) when I looked inside the .ops file which matches the
registry key where I found them for method #1.
I think most users overlook this wizard. I probably have been using
OL2000/2002 for something like 3 years and it wasn't until a few months
ago that I happened to notice it in the tools subfolder. I would've
thought that Microsoft would include mention of it in their KB articles
discussing how to backup Outlook's data. To most of us users, the
e-mail account settings are also data but not apparently to those KB
articles.
