This tip is directed at users of Outlook Express. One of the most important things we do not want to lose is our emails and the address book. If your computer is attacked by a virus or the boot track becomes unreadable on Drive C: the first thing we think of is our emails. They mean so much to most of us. So this is what you MUST do on a regular basis. Go to tools/options /maintenance/store folder and copy that address. Now paste that address into the address field in My Computer. You can then open that folder and there will be a list of all your emails. Copy these and paste them into a folder on an external drive or memory stick. Remember the name of the folder you save your emails to. Should be like this one: emails June 2010. You now have a safe copy of your emails in case of problems with your C: drive.

To recover them in Outlook Express go to file/import/messages and select the folder you saved your emails to. That will bring all the emails you saved back into Outlook Express.

The Address Book may not be as easy. It usually resides in C:/Documents & Settings/ your name/application data/ Microsoft/ Address Book. It is a *.wab folder so you may need to do a system search for *.wab so that all wab are found. When you find it double click to open it and make sure it is your current address file. Then save the .wab folder to an external drive or USB stick so you have a safe copy of your address book. You can import it back into Outlook Express by going to file/import /address book and filling in the location where you saved it.

It is very important to back up your emails and your address book regularly and after backup it would be even better to copy these backups onto a memory stick so if anything happens to your computer you will have a separate copy. There is nothing worse than to find your hard drive fails and to know you cannot get to your precious emails and address list. Having them saved on a stick could be a life saver. Remember to mark the memory stick and put it in a safe place, you never know when it will be needed.

When using Microsoft Outlook Express address book will occasionally get a message "To free up disk space, Outlook Express can compact messages." This in fact happens every 100th time you close Outlook Express. It is advisable to take up this offer and click OK. When compacting it will remove all the deleted .dbx files which are still in the emails folder and therefore your Outlook Express will work much faster. One VERY IMPORTANT thing to remember is do not turn off computer before compression ends or you will lose some files. It is a good idea to backup your emails (as described above) just in case anything goes wrong while the compression is taking place.