The right thing to do are regular, scheduled backups, however. Not only will you possibly forget about them sooner or later (at least I do), the manual process is far too cumbersome for something that should happen every day.
Fortunately, the Outlook Express mail files backup process can be automated with the help of a short batch file and the Windows task scheduler.
Back Up Your Outlook Express Mail Files Automatically
To back up your Outlook Express mail files automatically:
- Download oebackup.bat.
- Click on the link with the right mouse button.
- Select Save Target As... or Save Link Target As... from the menu.
- Open the downloaded file in Notepad.
- Customize it for your needs.
- You need to enter your Outlook Express store folder as source and
- the folder where you want to keep your backup copies as destination.
- You can move oebackup.bat to any folder, but I recommend either your My Documents folder or a sub-folder.
- Open Scheduled Tasks in your Windows Settings.
- Double-click Add Scheduled Task.
- Click Next.
- Click Browse....
- Find and select oebackup.bat.
- Click Open.
- Select a scheduling option under Perform This Task.
- Click Next.
- Click Finish.
The oebackup.bat script copies only files that have changed since the last backup. If you use the %date% directory trick, you may have to combine files from several directories to get a complete copy of your Outlook Express store folder.
Apart from this, restoring from this automated backup works just like recovering from a manual backup.
