Microsoft Outlook Personal Folders Backup is a backup application designed by Microsoft to backup Personal Folders Files, also called .pst files. It is compatible to Outlook 2002, 2003 and 2007 and every operating system these have been designed for.

Each .PST file contains all of your Outlook folders, including the Inbox, Calendar, and Contacts. You can have a single .PST file (usually called “Internet Folders” or “Personal Folders” in your Folder List), but you might also have an additional .PST file that you use for archiving (”Archiving Folders”). Personal Folders Backup lets you back up any or all of these .PST files.

The Outlook backup can be started by clicking in File > Backup in Outlook. A click on Options presents a list of all available .pst files of which all or some can be checked for backup. Afterwards a location for the backup has to be selected. I would suggest to burn the backup to CD or DVD to have it in case the hard drive has a defect.

A reminder can be set as well which reminds the user every xx days that a new backup is due. The backup can then be created, or saved as it is called in the application which writes it to the location specified in the options. The same menu provides the option to load a backup into Outlook.

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Mailstore Home looks very promising. It can backup emails from programs like Microsoft Outlook and Thunderbird but also from webmailers (pop and imap) and even mbox files. Mails from programs that are installed on your computer can be backed up with just two clicks of the mouse while pop3 and imap require additional information such as your Gmail account information.

All mails are compressed to save disk space. Once the mails have been added they can easily be burned to CD or DVD using the same interface. The one thing that is lacking is that there is no way of scheduling backups.

Mailstore offers a fast search which is great if you want to quickly find a mail but are not sure where it was send to. All mails from all accounts can be exported in the eml format which is the Outlook Express Electronic Mail format which is supported by most mail applications.

This makes it possible to import all mail into one program in case you want to start using one program from now on. You should note however that you need to add the accounts manually in that program, only the mails are imported.

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Outlook categories are saved in the registry in the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Office. The Outlook version that you are using determines the rest of the path. Here is a quick summary of possibilities:

• 8.0 \ Outlook \ Categories \ means Outlook 98
• 9.0 \ Outlook \ Categories \ means Outlook 2000
• 10.0 \ Outlook \ Categories \ means Outlook XP
• 11.0 \ Outlook \ Categories \ means Office 2003
• 12.0 \ Outlook \ Categories \ means Office 2007

All you need to do is export the categories key and import it in the new computer. To export the key right-click categories and select export from the menu. Select a file name and click on save to end the export.

Load the created file on the new computer and double-click it to import the settings. This is of course only valid if you import the categories into the same version of Outlook. If you are using a different version of Outlook you need to edit the registry key before you import the categories.

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