|
Raw Bytes Computer News KPBX FM 91.1 Radio National Public Radio Network Frank Delaney Producer Broadcast on Wednesday Morning 7:35 AM During Morning Edition Support Public Radio ! The Theater Of the Mind |
In computer news this week 07/11/2007 The mysteries of Microsoft Outlook
– the most popular combination email/calendaring/contact management
program in the world .. and
how to practice safe computing using it. Where is
the main outlook file on your computer – the one that holds all your
contacts, all your appointments, and all the emails you’ve saved.? I’ll
bet you don’t know, and I’ll bet you never backup your Outlook
data file, even though it’s one of the most important programs on your
computer. You might
back up other important data, and generally the programs you use – like
an accounting program or a graphics program – had the backup function
built-in and will do that for you.
If you
use any of the Microsoft Office Standard Programs – Word, Excel,
Publisher, Access, Powerpoint, the default place for storing your data files
is in the My Documents folder on your computer. Look in there and you’ll see all
the files related to Microsoft office, and you just have to backup that
folder to backup all your Microsoft Office data ......... with the exception of Outlook.. When you
use Outlook, the data is saved, but it’s saved in an almost impossible
to find place on your computer – not in My Documents – but buried
in a labyrinth of hidden system folders which you normally can’t find
or even see: Specifically
C:\documents and settings\username\local settings\application
data\microsoft\outlook\outlook.pst You can
do a search for the outlook file – which has a .pst
extension, and find your main outlook and your archive file, if you do use
the archive function of archiving old stuff into another outlook file
But you
might not even be able to find this, if you don’t have the proper
rights on your own computer, or if you share your computer with others. Until
recently – Outlook 2003 later versions and newer –Outlook didn’t
even have a backup function in it. Finally Microsoft added a backup
utility to outlook – under File – Backup. If you
use an older version of Outlook, 2002, 2000 or earlier – you can
download a backup
utility from Microsoft which will add this critical backup function to
your existing versions, which you can find in this transcript on my Raw Bytes
website. But I
also regularly export data from Outlook so I can have it in a more usable
format. I generally monthly export my Outlook Contacts and my Appointments by
clicking on File – Import and Export
– Export to a file
Select a windows csv file
and then I export and save that file. This gives me my data in a much
more manageable file format in the event of an outlook crash. I can
read either my contacts or calendar directly into Access or Excel that way if
I want to. You can
also highlight and save any emails into a text format – which you can
then read in Word, and have them saved in perfect chronological order. For some
reason Microsoft makes Outlook hard to backup, hard to restore, and vulnerable
in a system
crash, so be sure you backup it up. If it’s important enough to be in
your computer, it’s important enough for to you
back it up. |
|
|
For Raw Bytes This is Frank Delaney (C) 2007 MTA Micro
Technology Associates http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbx.html PO Box 31522 Spokane, Wa 99223-1522 (509)624-7230 |
|
