Email loss causes majority of business loss, to overcome the common problem the backup of Outlook Express mails can be taken regularly and this article is aimed at explaining you how you can backup your Outlook Express mails (Since, Outlook Express lacks a backup option). Outlook Express the widely used email program is usually installed with the Windows operating system. Outlook Express is fairly easy to use, but finding and backing up the emails can be a little more complicated. Since there are a large number of files and folders on a computer running Windows, the first problem is to find the files containing the emails. Outlook Express stores emails in .dbx files and it stores and maintains different dbx files depending upon the email folders created in Outlook Express.

In Windows 98, you can probably locate your emails somewhere in the Windows directory. In Windows 2000 and XP, emails are usually stored somewhere in the user data or application data folder. The common reasons for email loss are virus attack, software malfunction, power failures, human error and hard drive failure.

One can easily save and backup the emails, attachments, address book and other important data from within the email client to a CDRW or DVD; otherwise in case of a computer problem the user will find himself in the impossibility to get them back, and this can be a really unwanted situation especially for web community or people who rely on their emails. Unfortunately the common practice among us is that we actually start to do backup copies only after we lose data.

The simple way to find out and locate the actual path where your emails are stored is as follows
1. Start Outlook Express
2. Go to the Tools menu,
3. Open the Options dialog box.
4. In the Options dialog box, Select the Maintenance page
5. Click the Store Folder button.

Here you can find the path to the folder containing your emails. To open the folder, copy the path and paste in the address field of the Windows File Manager. You should see a number of .dbx files (depending upon the number of folders created) and possibly some other files, too. After locating the email folder, you can simply select all the files, copy them and paste it to a new location or you can take the backup on another hard disk, a CDRW, a DVD or a network drive.

How to backup Address Book
1. Select Tools >> Address Book... from the menu in Outlook Express.
2. Choose File >> Export >> Other Address Book... from the address book's menu.
3. Select Text File (Comma Separated Values) as the export format.
4. Click Export.
5. Select the location you want to export your address book to using the browse... button.
6. Give your backup copy a meaningful name.
7. Click Next.
8. Select the fields you want to include in your backup. 9. Select Finish.
10. Click OK to finish.

If you have not backed up you emails so, take a backup now. If you face any email loss and you have no backup then don