You can back up your address book very simply to a floppy disk or USB Flash drive and the heartache it has the potential to prevent far outweighs the thirty seconds it takes to complete the task. Follow these steps depending on the program you use:
Outlook Express Windows Mail Users
Windows Mail Users(Vista)
Thunderbird Users
AOL Users
Version less than 6.0, Start AOL, open the address book, insert a floppy or USB flash drive and use the “Save/Replace” button to save your address book.
Versions greater than 6.0 do not have the option of saving to a floppy because the address book is actually saved on AOL’s computers.
Juno Users
Refer to the instructions at Juno’s web site for details if you are using Juno 5.0 or earlier. Juno Platinum users can retrieve email in Outlook Express and use the instructions above.
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Thanks for posting this article. I’m decidedly frustrated with struggling to search out pertinent and intelligent commentary on this issue. Everybody today goes to the very far extremes to either drive home their viewpoint that either: everyone else in the planet is wrong, or two that everyone but them does not really understand the situation. Many thanks for your concise, pertinent insight.
Thanks. I appreciate the feedback you took the time to share.
Thanks very much for this info. Very easy to follow your instructions.
I tried that putting a .txt on the end of the Address File. It just says an empty file.
I got it to work. When I saved it as text, it saved it in the documents and it looks like I had saved it several times. I was able to save both Contacted and Person Addresses on a flash drive.
Thanks for everybody’s ideas and comments. I had no clue how to do this.
Just adding some thing here. In addition, you could also use mailstore to back up mail from all your email accounts (gmail, yahoo, thunderbird….) collectively to harddisk or usb. A big advantage is the ability to search for some thing in all the mails together. Mailstore can be installed into a usb, so it will run from any windows machine and u can carry your usb with all your mail viewable any time.
http://www.skipser.toolsbysk.com/p/2/p/general/how-to-backup-emails-on-usb-drive-easily.html
verizon won’t let me download my address book how can i get around it
Good tip, but I prefer (and this is obviously for more tech people) to copy my outlook .pst file located in the following directory:
C:\Documents and Settings\”your user name”\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook
I store that badboy on my external backup device in case something ever happens. This file inludes all mail, contacts, calender, notes, etc.
What it does not contain, and I wish it did, is Email account settings. I just keep print screens of each account for those, but I am sure someone has a better idea.
I have found that backing up mail and address book is the easy part. (In fact backing up, in general)
My problem is restoring it. ie, I had it on a flash drive and couldnt seem to get it on to a new computer.
The address book, and the mail itself seem to be in different locations, correct? Could you please run thru the steps of reversing the backup process?
Thank you,
Anne
I tried to export my address book via your instructions and all worked fine except only the Main Identity folder exported…not any of the sub folders. I tried selecting one of those to export and still got the Main Identity only. What’s happening?
I have a class from HP and we are creating a business card
with a photo on it. How do I move that picture?? HELP!
I may need the voodoo bear soon!!! Thanks Sherrie Mack
radarspeed57@yahoo.com
Be aware that the instructions for address book backup for Outlook Express doesn’t do a complete backup. These exact instructions are posted everywhere, MS included, yet they don’t tell you that this CSV backup doesn’t capture any but the main identities entries…it does not get any of the sub-folders or groups. If you want ALL your addresses, begin with START>RUN> type “wab /a” before you open the Address book. Then when you follow these instructions you’ll get all the addresses. You’ll loose the folders and groups, but you’ll get ALL the addresses.
in the newest version of Thunderbird, the export function does not appear under the “file” drop down, but is in the tools menu. When I export to my flash drive it saves it to Word as an ldif file, and looks like a scattered and random bunch of information along with discernible address and names.
Is this as clean as Thunderbird gets for this purpose?
Thanks for the years of help, Rick
Bill
LDIF is another standard address book format and it can’t be read cleanly…just re-imported into your address book. Instead, use the Thunderbird Export to CSV format.
I backed up the Address Book from Thunderbird, but then what is a CSV format. I wanted to see what it looked like off the flash drive, if it could be read, but then it said use Adobe to open it with, it would not open, so I had to delete it. So I am back where I started from. It only had the LDIF format.
When I do this, the output file has a ‘csv’ extension. That stands for ‘comma separated value’, and is just a text file. If you rename the file, changing csv to txt (or just adding .txt to the end of the file name), you can then open the file with any text editor or word processor program.