Outlook Backup, How To Do It The Easy Way

Your email is one of the most important things on your computer and you must have an Outlook backup process in place.  Here I will describe two methods to use for Outlook backup, a manual method and an automated method.  This article relates to Outlook 2007, and does not deal with Outlook Express.

The manual method is a lot more work but it is worthwhile reading to understand how your Outlook email is configured and the files you need to back up.  Once you understand this, you can always use the automatic method to make it easy.

One thing to remember is that if you use any of the manual methods described below for Outlook backup, make sure you close Outlook first or you may get errors when trying to copy files.

Some Definitions

Before we get into it there are some things that would be useful to explain.

PST Files

Firstly your Outlook email is stored in a single file.  And its not just your email either, your calendar, contacts, tasks, notes and almost everything you see when you open Outlook is stored in one file.  This is called a .pst file because its file extension is .pst e.g. outlook.pst. To locate your .pst file, in Outlook open the Tools menu, then Account Settings, then Data Files, and you will see a list of your .pst files and where they are stored on your computer.

Multiple PST Files

It is possible to have more than one .pst file as you can see above.  You might use more than one to separate emails for different accounts or separate email for different businesses.  Or in my case I have a separate .pst where I keep ‘interesting’ emails like spam, or those containing viruses so I can write about them in blogs like this one.

Archives

When you archive email you will also see these archive.pst files listed here too.  It is possible to have more than one archive file.

Microsoft Exchange

If you work with Outlook and use a Microsoft Exchange server, you will probably see a .ost file listed in the Data Files window.  This .ost is a copy of your Outlook data stored on your PC and usually does not need to be backed up.  Your Outlook data is actually stored on the Microsoft Exchange server and should be backed up there by your I.T. support.

It is possible to have both .pst and .ost files so if this is the case for you, you could back up your .pst file yourself.  But if you are using .ost Microsoft Exchange files I’d recommend you speak to your I.T. support to ask them to make sure you are backed up properly.

Profiles

It’s possible to set up Outlook so that more than one person can use it.  This is commonly done by using what are called Profiles.  Each profile can contain different email accounts, emails, calendars etc.  But the .pst and other files are still stored in the same default locations as described above.

To create profiles you go into Control Panel and look for the Mail icon.  Double click this and then click on Show Profiles

From here you can add or manage your profiles

Signatures

If you are using signatures in your email then you will want to back these up too.  By default your signatures are stored in :

Windows 7 :
C:\Users\<User Name>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Signatures

Windows Vista :
C:\Users\<User Name>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Signatures

Windows XP :
C:\Documents and Settings\<User Name>\Application Data\Microsoft\Signatures

NOTE : In each case you need to replace <User Name> with your own username on your PC

Stationery

Same goes for any stationery you may be using in Outlook.  By default your stationery is stored in :

Windows 7 :
C:\Users\<User Name>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Stationery

Windows Vista :
C:\Users\<User Name>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Stationery

Windows XP :
C:\Documents and Settings\<User Name>\Application Data\Microsoft\Stationery

NOTE : In each case you need to replace <User Name> with your own username on your PC

Nicknames

The Outlook nickname file stores any email addresses you have previously sent an email to.  You know when you start typing an email address into the To: field and you see some email addresses appear?  These email addresses are stored in the nickname file and Outlook uses it to suggest email addresses you want to send to.

Each profile has its own nickname file which shares the same name as the profile. The file extension is .nk2 so with a profile called outlook a nickname file would be called outlook.nk2. The default location for the nickname file is

Windows 7 :
C:\Users\<User Name>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Outlook

Windows Vista :
C:\Users\<User Name>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Outlook

Windows XP :
C:\Documents and Settings\<User Name>\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

NOTE : In each case you need to replace <User Name> with your own username on your PC

Rules

If you have any rules you can export these from the Rules & Alerts settings and backup the .rwz file it produces.

Accounts and Passwords

I have found no reliable way to backup your email accounts and passwords except by writing down the settings you need somewhere.  Unbelievable as it may sound, Microsoft have not provided any tool to export your email address, password and mail server settings.

There is one method which requires you to locate a key in the Windows registry and export that key but restoring the key to another computer doesn’t always work, and even if it does it doesn’t restore your passwords.  And how many people know what the Windows Registry is and are confident enough to find keys anyway?

For your accounts and passwords I suggest you store all your account information using the KeePass tool that we recommend for just such things.  Its free too! (Sign up for our training to get access to KeePass)

Manual Outlook Backup – The Hard Way

So once you’ve located all the files listed above you will be able to copy them to a backup location of your choice (like an external USB drive).  But this is a fairly long and complicated set of steps to follow, and most people miss out at least one file.

In fact the files listed above are only the main files I think you would need to backup in order to not lose your most important Outlook data.  There are other Outlook settings files like dictionaries, templates, macros and other customizations that you might want to backup too.

But as you can see already there are plenty of files to locate and backup by hand.  Wouldn’t it be much easier to have all of this done for you automatically?

Outlook Backup Made Easy

I use a program called Carbonite to make sure my Outlook backup is not only easy but automated.  As well as your email and all the other files I listed above, Carbonite also backs up your other important data like photos, Word documents, music and videos.  NOTE : you must tell Carbonite to backup certain files like videos. 

Carbonite runs ‘in the background’ on your computer so whilst its busy backing up your files, you never even know its there.

Now doesn’t that sound much easier?  Its even a lot easier to write about.