Backup Microsoft Outlook 2007

I was asked today by a friend how to backup and restore Outlook 2007 data, such as personal folders, rules, alerts, and other account information (also known as Identities). I’ve never been able to figure out how to backup the Identities, but here are the details on how to backup everything else.

In Outlook 2007, you can export your PST files (personal file folders)…
1. Click on “File”, then on “data file management”

2. click “open folder”, then copy/paste the contents to your backup location.

You can also use this method,
1. Click on “File”, then “Import and Export”

2. Click “export to a file”, then click “personal file folder”

3. highlight “personal file folders”, and check “include subfolders”

4. tell it where to save the PST file, then click finish, and let it do it’s thing.

To export/import your Rules and Alerts…
1. Click on the “Tools” menu, then “Rules and Alerts”

2. Click “Options”, then “import” or “export”, and tell it where to save the file.

For the Identities, I’m not sure where that information is located, I’ve never had much luck in researching that. If I find out, I’ll be sure to post it here.

There is a tool that do all of this automatically, though it doesn’t always work. It is called  “Amic Email Backup“.

Using Outlook to Access web-based Email

You will need a paid email account from Yahoo or Hotmail

Go to the mail settings and you should get POP information

Enter the POP information into Outlook and you’ll be able to access the email from Outlook.

There are free programs that are available that will allow you to access Hotmail or Yahoo, but they’re finicky in that they sometimes work, and sometimes don’t. One such example is YPOPs from www.ypopsemail.com, though it doesn’t always work.

Hotmail support is built into Outlook, but only works with Hotmai accounts created before 2004, and it’s hit-and-miss. Hotmail currently has no stable way, paid or otherwise, to access it from Outlook or any other client. You must go to the website to check your email, which is rather silly. 

POP3 access is not free with the US version of Yahoo Mail, but it is with the Canadian version at http://mail.yahoo.com. If you have an account with the US version, you can forward it to your Canadian Yahoo account. For Yahoo Canada, the send and recieve information for the incoming is ‘pop.mail.yahoo.ca’, and the outgoing is ‘smtp.mail.yahoo.ca’.

To access your Account Settings in Outlook, click on the ‘Tools’ menu and choose ‘Account Settings’ to review the information.

Outlook rules stopped working

You can run them manually if they no longer run automatically. You may be able to fix the problem with the following command, but you may lose your rules in the process.

outlook.exe /cleanprofile

source: techguylabs.com

Here’s another method from techyforums.com…

If your rules have stopped working or are working inconsistently then it could me due to a corruption in your data file. Luckily there are a couple of built in tools that should be able to fix this problem.

Browse to C:\Program Files\Common Files\System\MSMAPI\1033 and there should be to exe’s:

• scanpst.exe
• scanost.exe

Close down Outlook and make sure that any Outlook processes are also closed then put the above exe’s one at a time.