Rescue Outlook 2000 Data

E-mail is everyone's killer app, so back up your Outlook 2000 data!

By Dave Methvin

February 12, 2001

After last week's column on backing up Outlook Express, requests for a similar article on Outlook 2000 came pouring in. I take that as a good sign, people want to back up their data but just haven't been given the tools and information to do the job. Once you've finished this column you should have all the information you need to recover from a minor virus incident or a total PC meltdown.

Address Book

Generally, if you save your messages as described below you'll have a copy of your address book. That's because the Contacts folder is stored with all your other folders. However, you can get to just the address book if that's what you want. Outlook 2000 has an extensive import and export feature that's available through the File | Import and Export menu. Select "Export to a file" and choose "Comma separated values" as the data format. Then select your Contacts folder and provide a name for the exported file. This format is readable by almost any mail program, and you can even use Notepad to read it in a pinch. One unfortunate thing you may encounter is that the import/export wizard may not be installed and you'll have to dig out your original Outlook 2000 CD to install it. However, you can also export your address book through Outlook Express as described in last week's column, since they share the same address book.

Account Settings

Outlook 2000 mail accounts are stored in the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Outlook. To save this data, start RegEdit and select that key in the left-hand pane. Then from the menu select Registry | Export Registry File. Save the file to a name like OL2KACCT.REG and put it in a safe place. Like the address list, this will fit on a floppy for most people. To restore the account settings, right-click the .REG file and select Merge.

Mail Messages and Rules

Outlook 2000 stores all your messages and folders in a single file ending with a .PST extension, usually OUTLOOK.PST. You may also see an ARCHIVE.PST, which are the old messages and tasks that Outlook cleans out of your main .PST file if you have archiving turned on. Where are these files hidden? To find out, go to Outlook 2000 and right-click the root folder (usually named Mail) and click Properties. Then click the Advanced button on the dialog. You'll see a value named Path that tells you where the file is located. Typically, it's C:\WINDOWS\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook, but you may also see files stored in C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook as well. You can make backup copies of these files, but make sure to exit Outlook so that the files will not be in use while you're trying to make copies!

Mail Rules and More

Mail filtering rules are kept in a file with a .RWZ extension, usually in this same directory with your mail messages. There may also be a few other settings and log files in this directory. Since all these files are small, I suggest you back up all of them. Outlook is pretty configurable, so even if you save all these files you'll have a lot of configuring to do on a clean install. You can save yourself a lot of clicking if you go into RegEdit and export the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\9.0\Outlook to a file. If you want, you can save all your Office 2000 settings including Outlook accounts by exporting the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office subkey to a name like 0F2KSAVE.REG. To get all your settings back, just right-click the file you saved and select Merge.

Convenient Utilities

A few months back, Microsoft released a great little utility called Personal Folders Backup that helps you remember to save your mail folders. It can be set to remind you to do backups when you exit mail, and all you need to do is click the button and it will make the backup. You can even set the backup file location, so it's easy to back up to another disk or a network share. A second utility that I think is less useful is Save my Settings which lets you save some of your Office 2000 preferences (but not your important data like mail messages or address book) to a Microsoft web site. You can later retrieve those settings, either to restore them for the same computer or to migrate them to a new computer. My preference is to save the registry tree manually, rather than sending this data to some unknown Microsoft web site.

Okay, so now you know where your Outlook 2000 is buried. Go save it!

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Dave Methvin is a developer at PC Pitstop, a web site that automatically diagnoses and fixes common PC problems. He's also a Contributing Editor to Winmag.com.