Thursday, January 31, 2008

Backing Up Outlook Express Message Rules

For those that use Microsoft Office Outlook, backing up/exporting your message rules (filters) is a built-in feature.  For those still using Microsoft Outlook Express, the process is a bit more difficult.  The instructions I found here were very helpful, but they forgot to mention one very important step.  This blog entry assumes you know how to setup the email account and have moved all the mailbox folders (.dbx) from the old computer.
  1. Click Start, and then click Run.
  2. In the Open box, type regedit, and then click OK.
  3. Locate and click the following registry subkeys (save each key to a different file):

    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities\{Identity Number}\Software\Microsoft\Outlook Express\5.0\Rules\Mail

  4. On the Registry menu, click Export Registry File.
  5. In the Save In box, change the location to your desktop.
  6. In the File Name box, type mail rules.reg (for the mail rules key), and then click Save.
  7. On the Registry menu, click Exit.
Now, what you do NOT want to do is to then double-click the newly-created .reg file to import the contents to your registry - at least not yet.  Open Outlook Express on the 'new computer' and set up the mail account.  Now, go to the same registry location mentioned above, however this time, on the new computer.  The identitynumber will be different in this computer than of that in the previous computer.  You will need to copy this identitynumber exactly (to the clipboard).  Then open the .reg file you created from the old computer and run the "find and replace" feature under the Edit menu in Notepad.  You want to find every instance of the old identitynumber and replace it with the identitynumber from the new computer.  Save the .reg file and then run it.  If you did it correctly, the message rules/filters will now show up in Outlook Express.