Ask the Geek

Westbury, NY - With so much information stored in our inbox and folders, it's important to learn how you can back this up.  Since your POP email is stored in a local file, you should make a backup and then copy it somewhere other than your computer to be safe.

When you setup Outlook (see our screencast on how to do this) for POP email, Outlook creates a .PST file (Personal Folder file) on your local hard drive.  This file stores your emails, calendar, contacts, etc.   If your hard drive ever becomes unrecoverable, your emails would be lost.

To avoid this, you can use a free Microsoft add-in to Outlook, called the Microsoft Outlook Personal Folders Backup tool.  You can download it and install it fairly easily (see the links below).  Once the add-in is installed, from the "File" menu in Outlook, select "Backup..." and click on the "Options" button to choose a location to put your backup.  We highly recommend you put it somewhere other than your computer, such as a network share, Internet based backup service, or backup locally and then burn it to a CD or DVD.  The Microsoft web site for the tool explains how it works and how to use it.  The same tool can also restore from a backup.

 

Related Link(s):
Download and read about the Microsoft Personal Folder Backup Add-In