My Dad got a Laptop for Christmas and he needs all his old emails from his (very old) PC.

His old pc has Windows 95 and only a floppy drive. It has USB ports at the front but not sure if they work. Also any usb memory sticks i have dont work on Win95. The inbox file for outlook is 500mb.

Can the two computers be networked quite easily or is it a pain with Win95?

The laptop is a new toshiba one so has most of the latest features.

Also if i do get the inbox file across will i just be able to import all the emails in or is not that simple??

Cheers

With 500mb of emails it would take forever as most of them are less than 100kb each.

The main problem is that his outlook has messed up so i cant actually access any of the mails, im trying to do this at the moment as most of the emails will be old and no use so if i delete them hopefully i can get the inbox file small enough to split and stick on some floppys.

[Edited on 3/1/06 by greggors84]

If your using Outlook then there is a Import/Export function.

If your using Outlook Express then the emails will be stored in files that reflect the names of the Outlook folders (i.e. Inbox, Sent, etc). These files can be copied from an old Outlook Express installation to a new one by just copying & overwriting the files into relevant folder (do a file search on inbox.* to find where yours are stored).

It sounds like your biggest challenge will be physically transferring these files from the old PC to the new machine as the files are too big to use the diskette drive and Windows95 has no native support for USB devices.

Does your USB memory stick have any Win95 drivers that you could try installing?

winrar them then upload to www.yousendit.com

they then download to your new pc.

works well with video files as well

Really 4 problems

Fix Outlook
Backup Outlook Express
Physical transfer
Restore to new PC

If Outlook Express itself corupted you have a problem, fixing Outlook Express can be a real pain particularly with older versions. On http://www.tucows.com you should find software to do this and back up the mail files but it is usually shareware.

However my instinct would be to install Mozilla Thunderbird which on first run should read in all the old Outlook Express mail files and mail account settings. Delete any mail you don't want to keep and compact the mail file. Then install a program call Mozilla Backup and create a backup file.


To transfer the file you could use a serial cable or up load it to your internet webspace or install a a cheap network card and use a crossover cable to link the two computers.


At the other end install Thunderbird and Mozillabackup and in a couple of clicks all the old mail and settings will be transfered.

[Edited on 3/1/06 by britishtrident]

Been thinking --

best way to do the data transfer is to stick the win95 PC drive into an external 3.5" USB HD enclosure. -- quite cheap off ebay

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/3-5-USB-External-Hard-Disk-Drive-Case-Enclosure-Fan_W0QQitemZ8746091604QQcategoryZ16178QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Just a thought - make sure to compact the folder before trying to copy it. If this hasn't been done for a while it will make quite a difference to the .ost file size as Outlook is not very good at cleaning up after itself when you delete messages.

Cheers for the replies.

I found an old CDRW drive i had lying about and managed to install it, copied the dbx files over, but when imported into outlook, the files are still missing even though inbox.dbx is 450mb

Looks like i will have to use a dbx restorer have found a few and tried one but it didnt do anything, just showed the emails that outlook can access anyway.

The file you want is outlook.pst (if using Outlook rather than express) - it contains all your outlook files, emails, calendar etc.