Microsoft mail backup – where to find outlook express data
February 16th, 2010
For the longest time I didn’t know where the actual data was stored for my Microsoft Outlook Express email. I wanted to back it up in case I needed to do any sort of data recovery in response to a system failure. Well turns out not many people know where it is.
You will need to enable “view hidden folders” to see these, but the email lives here in Windows xp:
C:\Documents and Settings\[your username]\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{string of random characters}\Microsoft\Outlook Express
Now you can periodically backup email messages manually. If you wanted an advanced email backup system, there are data backup and recovery software that can automate the process. For the basic end user, this is generally good enough as long as they remember to perform the backup occasionally.