Where are my e-mails and addresses located? Rather, how can I back them up?

Here's the deal:

Three years ago I bought a new computer. Vista, Office 2007.
Last week this computer failed; bad motherboard.
Yesterday I bought a brand new computer with Windows 7.
I installed the old hard drive in the new computer, as secondary.
Since Office might be corrupted, I installed anew on the new drive.

Everything is fine, except for no Outlook address book or archived e-mails. I'm sure they're on the old hard drive, but how do I access or copy them?

Gary,

All archived mail will end in the extension .PST. You can perform a search on the slave hardrive for this extension.

Most .PST will be located under Local Drive ( secondary drive) > Users > ( Your name) > AppData > Local > Microsoft > Outlook.

You will also see a folder called Address Book that contains your offline address book.

Hope this helps.

It doesn't help. I'm still stuck.

Local Drive (E > Users (so far, so good) > Gary Tayman > AppData????

There IS NO AppData folder! Not on my old drive, not on my new drive.

As for old e-mails, by right-clicking Personal Folders and clicking properties, I found it's located here:

/C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\1033\OUTLWVW.DLL/outlook.htm

I went to the E: drive and found OUTLWVW.DLL. I copied it to a new temp folder on C:. Now what? How do I read it? How do I transfer it to the Archives on my new Personal Folder?

You have to un-hide the folder to be able to see the pst file(s)

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/w...w-hidden-files

Unfortunately, Outlook is only going to open specific files. The file extension .DLL is not a format outlook regonizes for email storage.

You will need to perform the instructions to show hidden files and folders and proceed to the defaulted location outlook uses to store Archive files.

Keep us posted and we will assist further.

Okay, I found Outlook.pst and Archive.pst. I copied both to my "temp" folder for easier access.

Now I've got 'em, but what do I DO with them?

If I select "Open With . . ." I get a warning that it could damage my system. Indeed, I'm wondering if this might replace my NEW pst files with the OLD. Should I change the name of the file? Is there a good program for reviewing and retrieving -- and possibly moving certain messages to my new Archive folder?

I didn't see the address book, but I didn't spend a lot of time. The address book is small, and if I can retrieve my old e-mails I can construct a new address book with very little trouble.

Suggestions, where do I go from here?

Gary,

Now that you have located the .pst files,you have two options. You can open the archive file by selecting file > Open data file. navigate to the location of the .pst and open it. this will show up under Archive within your folder list.

Secondly, you can import the content by selecting File Import / export > Import data file (.pst)

More information can be found here : http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/ou...010249983.aspx

Hope this helps.