Laptop on the way out

K

KOW

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My old Laptop is on the way out. I know nothing about computers. I went to local computer shop and asked could my e-mails, photos etc be backed up. The guy in the shop asked what e-mail account I used.
When I said eircom.net and mentioned Outlook he said it would be very difficult to do.
Could anyone advise me what options I have and is the task as difficult as stated?
I have not purchased new machine yet.
 
Not hard to backup outlook. You just need to follow the guide for the edition you have ... Outlook 2007, 2010 2016 etc.

What version of Office have you installed?
 
1. When you say your laptop is on the way out, what do you mean?
2. You should NEVER EVER operate without a backup of your important data, no matter what condition your laptop is in. It's a recipe for disaster.
3. Backups are fairly easy to do, depending on your needs. You can use an external drive, or online (cloud) storage.
4. So: a) do you have an external drive of any sort? b) do you use Google Drive or any other online storage already?, c) How much data do you have?

To answer the last question, assuming you are using Windows, do this:

Find "My Computer" on the desktop or Start menu. Open it, then click the C: drive. Inside there will be a folder called Users. Click that. Inside there will be a folder named after the user account that you log in as. Right click on it, click Properties, it will total up all the space that you are using.
 
If it's just Outlook and it's a reasonably recent version, the go to the File tab and Account Settings like this:

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The following window comes up on which you can copy the location of the Outlook .pst file:


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This can be used to do an upload to Google Drive or some other suitable storage. Remember, your email is only saved up to your last backup, so you should be doing this regularly.
 
I have a number of email accounts in my Outlook set up, eg, myname@company.com, help@company.com, info@company.com, bb@gmail etc..
I assume the above action should be taken for each email account right?

I also move emails to folders under the "root" outlook data file - How do I back that up?
A folder will have sub folders.
Also, a folder may contain emails received to and sent from info@, help@ etc...
 
Thanks a million for above replies. My son is home the weekend and I can show him responses and let him implement. In the new year I have to get going on education in this area. Cheers to all.
 
NewEdition said:
I have a number of email accounts in my Outlook set up, eg, myname@company.com, help@company.com, info@company.com, bb@gmail etc..
I assume the above action should be taken for each email account right?

I also move emails to folders under the "root" outlook data file - How do I back that up?
A folder will have sub folders.
Also, a folder may contain emails received to and sent from info@, help@ etc...
Click to expand...
Subfolders and their mail items are stored in the same pst file as their top-level folder. In the Outlook hierarchical mail folder view, you should be able to see the top level folders. Another easy way to get the pst file information for each one, if you have multiple pst files, is to just right click each one and choose "Data File Properties". On the dialog that comes up, hit the "Advanced" button and it will show you the file location.

9HXpbm5.png
 
@dub_nerd - Sorry, I was wrong in my description above.
I have Outlook Data file as a root item (when all folders are minimised)
Then the other email folders (info@, help@ etc) are "siblings" of Outlook Data file - Ie, they are not children / sub-folders.

How can I get the location of that file?

I take it the way you described to get the location of the PST file, that is the actual file I copy and paste on an external location to backup?
Or do I need to carry out a backup activity?
 
pudds said:
I wonder what is wrong with the laptop that OP thinks its on the way out.
Click to expand...
Have machine for a good few years. Getting slower all the time. Also heats up so much in the last few weeks it cuts out. Sometimes hard to switch on or off.
 
NewEdition said:
@dub_nerd - Sorry, I was wrong in my description above.
I have Outlook Data file as a root item (when all folders are minimised)
Then the other email folders (info@, help@ etc) are "siblings" of Outlook Data file - Ie, they are not children / sub-folders.

How can I get the location of that file?

I take it the way you described to get the location of the PST file, that is the actual file I copy and paste on an external location to backup?
Or do I need to carry out a backup activity?
Click to expand...
For any folder in Outlook which is not itself a file, you can right click it and select "Properties". That will show you what file/folders it is nested in. If it's a file, the menu item will have changed to "Data File Properties" in which case follow the procedure I gave earlier (using Advanced button) to get the file name.

When you have found the file name you can use it to locate the file itself in Windows Explorer. You only have to do that step once. If you know where your pst file(s) are you can just regularly make a copy to external or cloud storage or whatever. Ideally don't have Outlook running when you are making a copy (although in my experience you'll generally get away with it).
 
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DCD said:
Have machine for a good few years. Getting slower all the time. Also heats up so much in the last few weeks it cuts out. Sometimes hard to switch on or off.
Click to expand...
Make sure that air vents are not blocked with dust, lint, etc. Overheating is not a good sign. There may be processes running on the machine that keep the CPU active causing both heating and slowness. Unfortunately it's beyond the scope here to discuss how to go about fixing that. Likewise the difficulty with switching on and off could be a number of things -- sticky power button, worn disk drive spindle which spins up intermittently (although it has to be said all those things are quite unlikely). It's an unfortunate fact of life that unless you know someone who can keep a PC well tuned, performance can deteriorate over time even though it's in perfectly good shape.
 
Yes, calendars, contacts, email attachments, and anything else you create or receive from within Outlook is stored in its pst file(s).
 
Locate the air-vents on the outer-casing on the laptop. Using a QTip or a cocktail stick with the point broken off (blunt in other words) carefully scrape away any visible dust or fluff around the air-vent / fan grilles / blades. With the lap-top powered OFF, hold the tube of your vacuum cleaner to the air / fan vents and suck out any loosened gunk. This may help cure the overheating problems, BUT the CPU may have its own fan which will probably not be accessible without disassembly.

This procedure may keep the old device alive for long enough to get your data out of it. For the future, don't use the new laptop in bed or on carpets unless you have a rigid stand to lift the device free of dusty fibrous surfaces.
 
mathepac said:
For the future, don't use the new laptop in bed or on carpets unless you have a rigid stand to lift the device free of dusty fibrous surfaces.
Click to expand...
Sage advice!-- probably the biggest laptop killer in my experience. That plus snapping off edge connectors by putting strain on cables (esp. power cables) by using in awkward positions. For that reason I prefer "barrel connectors" -- cylindrical plugs on power cable ends with cable coming out the side rather than straight through.
 
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