Backing Up or Archiving Outlook Data

This section tells you how to back up or archive Outlook data such as your address book, email messages, settings and preferences. You may want to perform these steps if you are reinstalling your computer, moving to another computer or if you simply want to back up your Outlook data.

Note: Microsoft's "Save My Settings Wizard" is not included in with MS Office 2007. There is no easy way to backup your settings and preferences. 

Backing Up Email Messages and Address Books

If you set up Outlook as described in the section Setting up a New E-mail Account in Outlook, your messages are stored on the Cyrus Email server. Computing Services recommends that you regularly backup critical email messages (messages that contain important information that you never want to lose). Also, if you maintain some email addresses in a local address book, you'll need to back that up if you are moving to a new computer.

Follow these steps to backup email messages or address books from Microsoft Office:

1. In Outlook, select File > Import and Export... The Import and Export Wizard appears.
2. In the Choose an action to perform dialog box, select Export to a file and then click Next.
3. In the Create a file of type: dialog box, select Personal Folder File (.pst) and click Next.
4. Follow the instructions provided by the wizard to complete the process. Make a note of the location and name of the file that you specify for the backup file.
5. When you are finished with the wizard, you can put the file you created on a CD for safekeeping. Unless you specified some other location and/or filename in the wizard, the backup file will usually be named backup.pst in the C:\ Documents and Settings\YOUR_USERNAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft \Outlook (where YOUR_USERNAME is the name you use to login to Windows XP.

Restoring Email Messages and Address Books

To restore your email or address book data:

1. In Outlook, select File > Import and Export... The Import and Export Wizard appears.
2. In the Choose an action to perform dialog box, select Import from another program or file and then click Next.
3. In the File type to import from: dialog box, select Personal Folder File (.pst) and click Next.
4. Follow the instructions provided by the wizard to complete the process. When asked to specify a file, use the file that you created when you backed up your data.