Where Are Email Messages Stored?

Where are the email messages and contacts stored in Outlook 2007?

• I want to back up all of my kept email messages and contacts list that i have in Outlook. I don't want to take the risk of losing them and I would like to keep them seperate, (say on a stick), because they are building up. As a general rule I do delete anything I don't really want, but there are some that I like to keep as they have information in them that I really need to hang on to. There is a good possibility that because of other issues, I may at some stage be forced to reinstall my operating system, (Windows 7), and I know I will lose a lot of data files. I know how to back up all the other stuff, but I'm not so sure about the stuff in Outlook 2007.

• Answer:

  I assume this is your personal computer and not a company computer that is connected to a network. In general your emails and contacts should be storing to a local .pst file which is PROBABLY located on your c: in this location C:\Users\YOUR NAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\Out… to find out for sure where your .pst file is located open up Outlook go to TOOLS > ACCOUNT SETTINGS > click on DATA tab.