Mass saving emails in Outlook Express?

Vertigo-1

Senior member
Nov 9, 1999
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Since I'm running out of space in my Hotmail account, is there a way I could download the emails through Outlook and then mass save the emails to my hard drive? Using Outlook Express 2002.
 

joinT

Lifer
Jan 19, 2001
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Well, you can setup your Hotmail account to use OE, then just make local folders in OE to move it to ?

If you aren't already using OE for another email account, then the wizard will get you setup just fine (it should pop up if you don't have any accounts setup)

If you already are, I would suggest you create a new Identity and add your hotmail account to it.
[*]Go to file -> identity -> Add New Identity - any name will do and hit ok, then close the manage identities box.
[*]Now, in the folder bar on the left, click the very top "Outlook Express" -> now on right side, in orange click on Identities \/ Switch Identities. Select your new hotmail identity and click ok. OE will close and re-open.
[*]Once re-opened as the hotmail identity go to tools -> accounts click on the "add" button in the right column and select "mail" - this will open the wizard to add your hotmail account.

In OE there will be a box called Local Folders, make a new folder(s) and move the emails you wish to save into them.

Then you can change the directory they are saved in to somewhere other than the default.
go to tools -> options, click on the maintenance tab and click the store folder button. In the box that opens click change and browse to the dir you want to store the emails in. Click ok. I think it will restart OE or ask you to. If it doesn't I'd suggest after making that change to close & re-open OE.

That should do it, you can always check your email from OE, which is the advantage here. If you don't really do that, then maybe once you've added your account, you can actually just drag all the emails into a directory, then you can easily read them, because all you need is OE, which is installed with windows
 

igowerf

Diamond Member
Jun 27, 2000
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Set up Outlook Express like JoinT said to, and I think you can just select all the emails and drag them into a folder.
 

joinT

Lifer
Jan 19, 2001
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Originally posted by: igowerf
Set up Outlook Express like JoinT said to, and I think you can just select all the emails and drag them into a folder.

Originally posted by ME :p
That should do it, you can always check your email from OE, which is the advantage here. If you don't really do that, then maybe once you've added your account, you can actually just drag all the emails into a directory, then you can easily read them, because all you need is OE, which is installed with windows

I just don't understand why you'd only want to do it once... In fact I don't understand why anybody WOULDN'T use OE with their Hotmail account...
 

DaCurryman

Golden Member
Jun 20, 2001
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What I would do, which is slightly different is to not set up a new Identity, I would add the Hotmail account to the current main identity. I would just create a folder called "Hotmail" and then whatever subfolders I want under that ("sub1", "sub2", etc.). I would then create a rule that checks for mail addressed to my hotmail account and automatically sends it to the "Hotmail" folder. From there, I can move the mail into "sub1", "sub2", or whatever.

The benefit to this is that you don't have to switch identities....when you have multiple identities, you can only view one identity at a time. So to check your hotmail, you'd have to get off your current account, and then keep checking back and forth, By putting them on the same identity all mail comes in....you just use the filter/rule to determine which is your hotmail mail.

I currently have my about 6 accounts on my main identity in Outlook Express, and I have rules for them...works great. Also when you send mail, you can choose which account you want to send it from.
 

Vertigo-1

Senior member
Nov 9, 1999
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Well, I was actually hoping to save each email as an individual .eml file or something like that, outside of OE. I'm not sure how OE is saving the emails but it doesn't seem to be in any tangible form that I can find on my HD.
 

DaCurryman

Golden Member
Jun 20, 2001
1,209
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Originally posted by: Vertigo-1
Well, I was actually hoping to save each email as an individual .eml file or something like that, outside of OE. I'm not sure how OE is saving the emails but it doesn't seem to be in any tangible form that I can find on my HD.

I'm not sure about saving individual .eml files (I think regular outlook does that), but OE saves mailbox folders with the .dbx extension.

If you're using WinXP, it will most likely be here:

C:\Documents and Settings\USER NAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{LONG STRING OF CHARACTERS}\Microsoft\Outlook Express

Items in all CAPS is something that would be diff on your comp.
 

joinT

Lifer
Jan 19, 2001
11,172
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Well, I was actually hoping to save each email as an individual .eml file or something like that, outside of OE. I'm not sure how OE is saving the emails but it doesn't seem to be in any tangible form that I can find on my HD.

2 of us have explained this.. Once you've downloaded the emails in OE, just drag them to a folder.

Originally posted by: joinT
That should do it, you can always check your email from OE, which is the advantage here. If you don't really do that, then maybe once you've added your account, you can actually just drag all the emails into a directory, then you can easily read them, because all you need is OE, which is installed with windows
Originally posted by: igowerf
Set up Outlook Express like JoinT said to, and I think you can just select all the emails and drag them into a folder.

It's not hard d00d. Drag and drop.