Late last week I had an email from Pat asking how she can read her old Outlook Express email messages.  Apparently Pat’s  computer crashed and she’s wondering what her options are.

Whilst this is my official reply to Pat (thanks for writing in Pat), I’m posting this information here in case it’s of use to other users.

Firstly, Pat did not say what type of computer she has now, so I’m going to cover two different scenarios and see where we end up.  Okay let’s get started.

Assumption 1- No longer on XP

Let’s assume Pat no longer has a Windows XP computer running Outlook Express.  What are her options?

Pat, the only way you are going to be able to get your old messages is to ask a computer technican if they can:

(a)  Remove the hard drive and recover the Outlook Express .dbx files.  These files contain all the messages in your Inbox, Outbox, Sent items folders etc.

(b)  The computer technician would then need to create a new user account on a Windows XP machine and import all of those .dbx files into Outlook Express.

(c)  He or she would then need to Export those files to Microsoft Outlook which is the email program that comes with Microsoft Office Small Business or Professional Edition.

Microsoft Outook then stores all those messages in a .pst file format which could technically be imported into one of your computers provided that you have Microsoft Outlook installed.

Note:  If you are now using Microsoft Outlook for email on say a Vista or Windows 7 operating system create a new user account and copy the .pst file into the new user account – as you do not want to wipe out your existing .pst file in Microsoft Outlook.

I also note that this is a very long and time consuming process, and you may want to verify that your technician is willing to do it and what the final price will be.  It’s just not simple or straight forward.

The other consideration is that this will only work if the hard drive in your old computer still works – i.e. it can be put up to another computer and read as a drive.  If that hard drive has bad sectors on it, or it’s burned out, then your next step would be to take the drive to a Data Recovery company.  These companies rebuild hard drives and recover data and the cost runs into thousands.  Therefore, before even considering what I’ve said above you need to determine whether your old computer crashed because of a motherboard failure, or hard drive crash or corrupt operating system?

Scenario 2 – You have another machine running Windows XP Home or Pro

If you do have another working computer running XP, and your computer technican can recover the .dbx files from your hard drive, you can do my free online course about Backing Up and Restoring Outlook Express.

Note:  if you already have Outlook Express running, importing those files would wipe out your existing files.  Two options exist here:

(a)  Either rename the .dbx files from the old machine – eg.  to Inbox_old.dbx, Outbox_old.dbx and then copy them into your existing installation of Outlook Express.  This will ensure you don’t wipe out your existing email messages; or

(b)  Create a new user account on the Windows XP computer that is working and copy the .dbx files into that new User Account using the method taught in my online course.  When you create a new User Account on a Windows XP machine it will create a fresh installation of Outlook Express.  Note you don’t have to add email accounts to send or receive email in this installation – you can just use it to read messages.

Summing Up

The only program that Outlook Express can cross platform with is Microsoft Outlook.  You cannot migrate it to any other email programs that I am aware of.

Outlook Express users with a working installation may want to consider getting themselves a free Gmail account with Google.  Forward any messages you want to keep long term to your Gmail account.  Gmail is online and allows you roughly 7 GB of space so you’ll never run out of space with Gmail.  This will avoid the situation that Pat now finds herself in.

Pat – you could create a Label in Gmail for those particular emails you want to keep forever and just store them there.  The other advantage in using Gmail for email is that no matter how many times you change ISP’s you get to keep your same Gmail email address forever.  Personally I don’t use Outlook Express now – Gmail is so much better.