How to Save Your Address Book

Saving Your Address Book:

Anyone who has owned a computer long enough will tell you that eventually, somehow, someway, your computer is going to crash and crash hard. I'm not talking about a simple reboot fix here either. I'm talking about the kind of crash where you lose data. Sometimes you lose it all!

One of the worst things to lose, and often one of the most overlooked, is the address book. After adding email addresses of friends, family, and sometimes business connections, you'd be surprised to find out how much info you have stored in there. The absolute fasted and surest way to find out just how much valuable info you have in your address book is to lose it all.

I am constantly having people bring their computers to me for a complete reinstall (this is where the entire drive and it's contents are totally nuked and wiped clean, and then all software is reinstalled), and when I warn them about how much data they might want to back up or save, they tell me "Well, there really isn't anything on there to save." But just wait until they get the computer back with a fresh reinstall. Sure, it runs faster and more reliably, but "HEY! WHERE IS ALL OF MY STUFF? AND WHAT ABOUT MY EMAIL ADDRESSES?" I see it all the time. Usually, I make copies of it for them just in case. They never listen!

To save your address book in Outlook Express, follow these simple instructions:

1. From Outlook express program, click File, Export, and then click on Address Book.

2. Highlight the Text File option, and click Export.

3. Type a:\filename at the cursor to copy addresses to the floppy drive. Then click Next.

4. Click Finish and it is done.

To replace the address book once you have prepared the computer, or to install your address book into another computer, such as a laptop, use the following instructions.

1. From Outlook Express program, click Import, then highlight Other Address Book.

2. Highlight Text File option, and click Import.

3. Type a:\filename at the cursor if you remember the name of the file, or click on Browse and locate the file location in the floppy disk.

4. Click Finish, and it is done.

See? Not as hard as you thought huh? At the rate that you're going, you'll be writing your own computer programming code before you know it! Who knows?...You might be the next Bill Gates. But then again, if you're getting your info here from me, I guess that isn't very likely now is it?