Move/Transfer Emails to a New Computer

 I receive many emails with questions :

• I've bought a new computer and I've lost my old emails?

• How do I configure Outlook express to work on my new computer?

• How do I find my email settings

• How do I move my outlook Express emails to Windows Live Mail.

So with Windows 7 now released I thought it was time I gave a few pointers.

Make a Note of you Settings

You need the

• name
• email address
• pop3 server name
• smtp server name
• account password

For each email account. All of these things are clearly visible if you look at your old email account properties except for the password.

 If you have forgotten this then there is a very useful free utility that will display it for you- see Recover Outlook Express Account Passwords for details (note applies to Incredimail as well).

Moving Your Old Emails

There are several alternative approaches to moving your email from the old to the new computer depending on how much of your old email you wish to keep.

Just like moving house gives you the opportunity to get rid of old rubbish moving to an new computer is a good time to tidy up your inbox.

Backup and Restore

Backup up the old email and restore it to the new computer. In the case of outlook express this is best done with an external backup software specifically designed for Outlook Express.

With IncrediMail this facility is provided with the email client under the file menu.

Archive Email

Instead of moving the email from the old inbox to the new inbox you can archive the email onto disk or CD so that it is available if needed. This is my preferred solution as it gives you the opportunity to get rid of old emails and tidy up the inbox.

However in order to do this you need really to purchase archiving software like asksam or the Outlook Express To HTML Converter .

If you only have a few emails that you want to transfer then you can do it manually by saving the email to your hard disk( it automatically gets saved as .eml file. you can then transfer it to your new machine (e.g flash drive) and simple drag it to your inbox and it gets copied there.

If you only want to transfer recent emails then keep a copy of the  emails on the email server ( see Leaving Email on the Internet).

If you do this a few months before you move to your new computer then when you connect your new email client (on the new computer) it will automatically download all the emails from the server.

If your mailbox on the email server is large enough (most are) then I would consider leaving a copy on the server as backup.

Use IMAP4 To Access Your Email

With Imap4 the email remains on the email server and so all you need to do is to configure the email client on the new computer and you have access to all your emails without having to backup and restore etc. This is my preferred approach -See Imap4 and POP3 Compared

You will still need to move the address book.

Moving the Address Book

This is very easy to transfer manually as all you need to do is to export and import it. See ( Backing up the Outlook Express Address Book).

Incredimail Registration Codes

If you have purchased the premium version of IncrediMail then you need to remove the registration codes from the old machine and install them on the new computer. See remove codes and request codes be resent if you have lost them

Your Old Computer

There is always something that you forget to transfer so it is a good idea to keep your old computer for a few months so that you can be sure that you haven't forgotten something.

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