Exporting Message Rules in Outlook Express 2

[dusanv]

Does anyone how to transfer existing Outlook Express message rules to the instance of Outlook Express on another machine without doing it manually?

 

[jmatt]

http://www.personal-computer-tutor.com/gman10.htm

This is included in the above site .
Once you follow the instructions to this point, you've already saved all of the files you need to save for OE. The next section will deal with saving and backing up your OE settings. These include all of your Message Rules (I have hundreds of these), any signatures you've created and even the way OE is displayed when you open it.

 

[jmatt]

And another way .

http://www.compu-docs.com/Downloads/OE Backup.txt

If you have multiple identities, refer to the "Back It Up / Address Book --
Multiple Identities" section for information on how the address book entries
will be merged after an import.

Messages Rules, Signatures, and OE Settings

This section involves modifying the registry by importing the registry key(s)
that you exported for your backup. It is recommended that you back up your
entire registry before starting these procedures.

If you installed Windows from scratch and want to restore the previously
backed up registry keys, you need to update the backup of the registry keys
with the new GUID since the new Windows installation assigned you a different
GUID automatically when you started setting up OE. First you need to find out
what the new GUID is.

1. Click on Start / Run, type regedit and click OK.
2. Navigate to this key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Identities \ {GUID}
3. Click on the folder icon next to it.
4. Look in the right-hand pane to see the username value; it will be the same
as the identity name used in OE. With the GUID highlighted on the left, right-
click on it, select Rename, then press Ctrl+C to copy it to the clipboard,
then immediately press the ESC key. Do not rename the key!
5. Exit the registry by clicking Registry / Exit.
6. Go to Start / Programs / Accessories / WordPad
7. Select File / Open. Change the Files of Type drop-down menu to All
Documents (*.*).
8. Navigate to the folder where the first backed up registry key is stored,
highlight it, and click Open.
9. Select Edit / Replace. Paste the GUID from the clipboard into the Replace
with field by right-clicking in the field and clicking Paste.
10. Move the Replace box out of the way so you can see the first few lines of
the registry file. Highlight and copy the old GUID in the document, including
the curly braces { } !
11. Paste the old GUID into the Find what field of the Replace dialog box by
right-clicking in the field and clicking Paste.
12. Select Replace All to replace every occurrence of the old GUID in this
registry file with the new one.
13. Go to File / Save, then File / Exit.
14. You must repeat this procedure for all saved registry keys.
15. To import each modified registry key, open Windows Explorer, maneuver to
the folder with your OE backups, then double-click the modified registry key
to import it and merge it with your registry.

Repeat these steps for each key to be imported and for each identity.

http://www.PCNineOneOne.com

 

[jmatt]

This page does show it better .

http://www.pcnineoneone.com/howto/oebackup2.html?

 

[dusanv]

The "other way" worked excellent...because I only wanted to import the message rules and leave everything else intact in my new instance of OE (including the GUID), I exported only the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities\{GUID}\Software\Microsoft\Outlook Express\5.0\Rules\Mail key. Then I opened the key in notepad, replaced the old GUID with the new GUID, saved the key, and imported it in the new machine registry. Next time I opened OE on the new machine, all the rules where there -- thanks a lot for the tip!

 

[jmatt]

Good news , thanks for replying .