"Liz" wrote in message
...
Is it possible to store my messages on a disk and bring them up at a
future
time using the disk? If so, how can I store them. We are changing
servers
and I have to reduce the size of my files.

Please respond ASAP.

Thanks,
Liz


Go to Microsoft huge support knowledgebase
(http://support.microsoft.com), select an advanced search, pick the
product (Outlook for whatever unmentioned version that you have), and
search on "backup move restore". KB article 287070 may be of most
interest to you. However, note that none of those instructions will
tell you how to save the account definitions. Those are not included in
the backups. I believe but have not verified that the "Save My Settings
Wizard" in MS Office will save and restore the account definition(s).
Although Microsoft forgot to include an File - Export function for
accounts, they have the reverse of importing accounts (for Internet
accounts which means those defined for Outlook Express). So you could
use OE to import the accounts from Outlook, export them in OE to .iaf
files, import them back into OE (on the other host of after a fresh
reinstall of the OS), and then use the Import function in in Outlook to
get the Internet Mail Account Settings. Go figure that stupidity all
because Microsoft has continually neglected to provide a decent and easy
means of exporting account definitions to provide a *full* backup for
Outlook.

In Outlook, the export to file and selecting .pst as the target file
does NOT include the account definitions. The PST file does not contain
the account definitions so using it in a restore doesn't get you back
the account definitions. There is a registry key but it contains
definitions for th accounts, rules, and your mail profile(s). Use
regedit to look at:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows
Messaging Subsystem\Profiles\yourprofilename

What you will see is a bunch of hex-character named subkeys. Those
contain the rules, accounts, and profile data. One of the subkeys
should show a "+" (plus) expansion icon next to it and have further
subkeys. The accounts are defined under there but the values for each
data item are in hex rather than string values, so you need to edit them
so the window will show the character equivalents of each hex character
so you can identify which sub-subkey is for which account. However,
even then, there is a mix of account definitions and some other data
file definitions, so look for the sub-subkeys that have the POP3, SMTP,
or HTTP server data items and values. You could simply export the above
listed registry key and import it later which would include rules,
accounts, data files, and profile setup except that some may not be
accurate when migrating to a new or fresh setup on another host (like
the data file locations). Microsoft has made it ridiculously difficult
to export account definitions from Outlook so you can import them later
after a restore or to migrate to another host. That's why some authors
came up with their own backup programs that figure it out for you, like
ABF Outlook Backup (never used it myself), but they cost money.

You never mentioned WHAT type of "disk" to which you wanted to offload
the Outlook files. If the disk if a CD then remember that is read-only
media. You can write to it using CD burning software, like Nero, but
copying the files from that read-only media will result in the read-only
flag being set on it. Outlook demands write access to its files which
means you will need to remove the read-only attribute from the file
after copying it from the CD back onto your hard drive.

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