Windows Backup Guide

E-Mail Backup

How to back up your e-mail messages

Outlook Express Backup. How to back up Outlook Express e-mail messages and contacts.
Windows Live Backup. How to back up Windows Live Mail and Windows Mail e-mail store.
Mozilla and Netscape Backup. Backing up Mozilla and Netscape e-mail database.
IncrediMail Backup. How to locate and back up IncrediMail e-mail.
Outlook Backup. How to make a backup of e-mail messages and contacts in Microsoft Outlook.
Argentum™ Backup How to back up all of the above automatically, with a single click!

Outlook Express Backup

Outlook Express is the e-mail client included with Microsoft Internet Explorer 4, 5, 6, 7 and Microsoft Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP operating systems. Outlook Express is designed for home users who gain access to their e-mail messages. Built on open Internet standards, Outlook Express is designed for use with any Internet standard system, for example, SMTP, POP3, IMAPI, and NNTP. It provides full support for today's most important e-mail, news, and directory standards, and is very easy to use.

Outlook Express e-mail message store, along with the address book, usually resides in subfolders at the following paths:

C:\Documents and Settings\User Name\Application Data\Identities\
C:\Documents and Settings\User Name\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook Express\
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook Express\
C:\Documents and Settings\User Name\Application Data\Microsoft\Address Book\

This is correct for Outlook Express 4.0, however to correctly determine the location for Outlook Express 5.0, 5.5 and 6.0 e-mail store, it is recommended to search through the registry. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities registry key contains ID subkeys which correspond to active identities. Under the each identity key there is a \Software\Microsoft\Outlook Express\5.0 subkey which holds the required Store Root string variable. To determine the location of the address book file, take a look at the following registry keys:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\WAB\Wab File Name
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\WAB\WAB4\Wab File Name

Outlook Express e-mail data is usually comprised of the following items:

E-mail and news (.dbx) folders for Outlook Express 5, 5.5, 6.
E-mail and news (.mbx, .idx, .nch) folders for Outlook Express 4.
Address book (.wab) file.

Argentum™ Backup will automatically search through the registry, detect, locate and backup all of the above Outlook Express e-mail data for any Outlook Express installation (4, 5, 5.5, 6, and 7) on any Microsoft Windows platform (95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP). Argentum Backup also supports Microsoft Mail 3. To recover Outlook Express data it is recommended to use File/Import/Messages... from the Outlook Express menu.

Windows Live Mail Backup

Windows Mail Backup

Windows Live Mail is an e-mail client from Windows Live set of products. It is intended to be a successor for Outlook Express on Windows XP and Windows Mail on Windows Vista. Both programs feature reduced functionality compared to Outlook Express.

Windows Live Mail and Windows Mail e-mail message store, along with the account data, usually resides in subfolders at the following paths:

C:\Users\User Name\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail\
C:\Users\User Name\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Mail\

To correctly determine the location for the e-mail store, it is recommended to search through the registry. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live Mail and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows Mail registry keys contain the required Store Root string variable.

Argentum™ Backup supports all versions of Windows Live Mail and Windows Mail integrally.

Mozilla E-mail Backup

Netscape E-mail Backup

Recent versions of Netscape Communicator are built on top of Mozilla (Thunderbird), so both e-mail clients share the same folder locations for e-mail database:

C:\Documents and Settings\User Name\Application Data\Mozilla\Profiles\
C:\Windows\Profiles\User Name\Application Data\Mozilla\Profiles\
C:\Windows\Application Data\Mozilla\Profiles\

Mozilla profile contains your bookmarks, mail/news files and account settings, stored passwords, address book, security certificates and preferences.

Mail. Mail messages are stored in the Mail sub-directory. To back up your mail messages, save the files without extension, for example INBOX. To back up filters too, save the rules.dat file. The *.msf files are index files that will be automatically regenerated if removed. Save the entire Mail directory if you are uncertain what to save.
News. News settings and messages are stored in the News sub-directory. Your subscribed groups are stored in the *.rc files. The complete news server groups list is stored in hostinfo.dat. *.msf files store message summaries. To back up news, save the *.rc, *.dat, and *.msf files.
Address book. In your profile directory, save abook.mab (personal address book) and history.mab (collected addresses). If you have more than one address book, save all *.mab files.
Bookmarks. Save the bookmarks.html file.
Saved password data. Username and password data is stored in 12345678.s (the number part is random). Save the file.
Junk filters. Save the training.dat file which stores information for the new smart filtering system.
Cookies. Save the cookies.txt file.

Argentum™ Backup automatically detects and saves all of your Mozilla/Netscape/Thunderbird profiles with all of your bookmarks, mail/news files and account settings, stored passwords, address book, security certificates and preferences.

IncrediMail Backup

IncrediMail, an alternative e-mail client with rich multimedia capabilities, usually stores your e-mail under the following folders:

C:\Documents and Settings\User Name\Application Data\IM\Identities\
C:\Documents and Settings\User Name\Local Settings\Application Data\IM\Identities\

These are the default locations for IncrediMail e-mail to back up. Argentum™ Backup supports IncrediMail integrally.

Windows Backup Guide

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