MORE ON REFORMATTING YOUR HARD DISK

A few weeks ago I discussed many of the precautions a person must take to successfully reformat his or her hard disk and reinstall an operating system and applications. I suggested some procedures and aids.

However, before I reformatted my own hard disk, I did a little thinking. Was I sure I could recover my Outlook address book, folders, and emails? What about my passwords? Was I certain that I could write them all down? Where exactly did Windows store them?

And what about my Windows settings? The screen resolution, the screen saver, and many other tweaks? Same for Outlook, my other Office programs, and those of other applications. Would I have to reconfigure all of them when I reinstall? Or is there a way of finding and saving the configuration files and restoring them after a reformatting and reinstallation?

Some of the answers are too geeky for this column. But many aren’t. I snooped around some support forums and asked some questions. I’ll summarize what I’ve learned. If you follow these additional instructions, you’re even more likely to be up and running within several hours.

In the previous column I mentioned that to restore your email and address book, you should back up your *.pst file. After reinstalling Microsoft Outlook, you replace the installed .pst with your backed up .pst. It turns out that while this works, your address book may not be in alphabetical order. To correct that, you must still first replace your new Outlook .pst file with your backed up Outlook .pst file.

Then do the following:1- Go to Outlook and use Tools – Options menus

2- Select Mail Setup Tab

3- Click on Data Files button

4- In the next window you’ll see a list of your data files — take note of their paths and backup the files. You may have to stretch the column headers in the window to copy and paste the path. Then you can navigate to it in Windows Explorer or My Computer, from the Start button.

5- When you reinstall Outlook you can simply replace the new files with yours. Remember, you have to first replace reinstalled Outlook’s .pst file with your backed up .pst file. Then replace your accounts files with the data files above.

Another option with Outlook is to use the Save Settings wizard in the tools folder to backup your settings. For example, settings include your rules, accounts, and the accessibility of your address book. Yes, the .pst file will restore it as will the folders above, but the settings will restore them just the way you had them. It worked for me.

If all this seems too much trouble, you can get most of it done by a product called Outsource-XP by a company called TotalIdea. It has a good reputation. You can find it here. Outsource is for Outlook 2002-2003 and costs $29.95.

TotalIdea’s description follows:

Unfortunately neither Outlook� 2002 nor Outlook� 2003 include any option to save and restore all your important personal files, settings, templates, and eMail accounts. This is where OutSource-XP v2 helps you. It creates backups of your Outlook� 2002 / 2003 files, settings, and eMail account settings. Additionally, OutSource-XP v2 can create a backup of your Office XP and Office 2003 activation.

OutSource-XP v2 automatically collects all important Outlook� 2002 / 2003 files, and lists them for you. The only thing you have to do is to choose the files (and settings) you want to backup, and click a single button to start the backup creation. The unregistered version of OutSource-XP v2 saves the files into a pre-selected ‘backup-folder’, but does not compress the files. The registered version compresses the backup into one single file, and offers a ‘Quick-Backup’ feature which creates a backup just with a single mouse click.

This is probably enough to digest for this week. Next week I’ll continue with properly preparing a reinstallation of your operating system and applications with as little trouble as possible.

Dennis Turner