Exporting your Contacts List from Outlook Express & Outlook
Users of Outlook Express (OE)
Open your email software up and go to File, Export, Address book, when the screen should look something like the following pictures, taken from OE6, which I guess most of you will be using by now, but from memory, OE5 will be very similar.
Select Export from this screen, select Text File, and then Browse on the following screen and browse your way to a directory within My Documents that you can save it in. Give it a suitable name eg Contacts_0903, suggesting the file contains a list of the contacts that were available as at Sept 2003, or anything similar that makes sense to you.
Select next and you will then be presented with a screen asking you
for the fields that you want to save. You can take the defaults or check
additional ones you wish to save, if any like nickname etc and then select Finish.
You’ll then get a progress screen and the message about being
finished and then Close that screen.
You now have a working backup that you can restore in the event of a problem, change in HDD or use on another PC.
The exercise can be repeated for the email messages too if you select the right option, but I’ll leave you to explore that one yourselves!
Users Of Outlook
Again similar for the other flavours of Outlook, but this demo is based on the aforementioned 2000.
Go to File, Import & Export, select Export to a File then Next. Select Personal Folder File (.pst) then Next.
Select Browse, find a directory where you want to save it too and give it a suitable name etc. Select the section you want to save, Contacts, Next, Finish and away it goes and saves your data to where you defined.
In the event then of a problem at least you have the data ready to Import
back into Outlook.
Using Groups
Do you use Groups in the Outlook family of email programs?
These enable you to send to groups of people that you regularly send to without having to add their names to the To:, Cc: or Bcc: lines each time you want to send a message.
Having created these lists you may want to save a copy of them because if you swap machines, HDD or have to rebuild your system these lists do NOT get saved even if you export your contacts to a file etc.
Whilst you have the Group open, go to File, Save as... And then choose your file format and save a copy to the same destination folder you have exported your Contacts list to. You can't re-import this list but at least you'll have a copy of what was in there so it will be easier to rebuild the group list.
Do you also know that if you wish to send the same email 
to a number of people but don't want each to know the other's email address or that the others have had a copy of the email in question, then add the names to the Bcc: field. Bcc stands for Blind Carbon Copy, if you're interested and can be switched on permanently if you so wish. Click on View on the Menu bar and check the Bcc Field option. As you may have guessed I use both Groups and put them in the Bcc: field to send out these messages.
The basic information is common to the different flavours of Outlook, but may hide behind some slightly different wording, but at least you get the idea of what to do, I hope.
If anyone has any problems then take a look at the built in Help and then if you are still struggling feel free to come back to me.
