Microsoft Office Outlook (Outlook XP/2002, Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007) Personal Folders (PST) Backup Tool

Many users use Microsoft Office Outlook (i.e. Outlook XP/2002, Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007) as their default e-mail client, contact list manager and daily management tasks organizer. Over time, it’s common to have Outlook contain all your important email messages, contacts information, calendar entries, appointment details, essential notes, critical to-do tasks and other personal data. To safeguard your important data against data loss and theft, it’s crucial to backup all your data — imagine what would happen if your hard disk got corrupted or if you accidentally formatted your computer and lost all your data!

Thankfully, the later versions of Microsoft Outlook stores all data in .pst (Personal Folders) files, which makes it very easy for backup and restore purposes. Each .pst file contains all of your Outlook folders, including the Inbox, Calendar, and Contacts. You can have a single .pst file, but you might also have an additional .PST file that you use for archiving.

Compare Personal Folders Backup, exporting, and archiving

There are three ways to back up your Outlook e-mail messages, contacts, appointments, tasks, notes, and journal entries — the Personal Folders Backup tool, exporting, and archiving.

Personal Folders Backup tool is used to copy your entire .pst file or files to your hard disk or to a network server or share.

Export is used to create a file containing Outlook information, but still keep the original data in your folders. You can only export one folder at a time.

Archive is used to move the items that you want to back up out of your folders.

Microsoft provides a Outlook add-in named the Personal Folders Backup plugin that can create backup copies of your .pst files at regular intervals (only for Outlook 2002 and later versions), backing up all of your Outlook folders easily and automatically.

Personal Folders Backup offers several options. For example, you can choose which .pst file you want to back up, and how often you want to back them up. Before you begin the backup process, you might want to check the size of your .pst file. If you have multiple folders in your .pst file, you must select the top-level folder to determine the total file size for all the folders. Make sure that the file sizes tally.

To install the Microsoft Outlook Personal Folders Backup tool:

1. Download the tool from the Microsoft Office Online site by clicking the Download link and following the instructions in the dialog boxes
2. Make sure that you quit Outlook
3. Double-click the Pfbackup.exe program file on your hard disk
4. Follow the instructions on the screen to complete the installation
5. Start Outlook

Instructions for use:

1. The Personal Folders file (.pst) that you want to back up must be open. If the file is visible in Folder List, it is open
2. On the File menu, click Backup
3. Click Options
4. In the Backup these personal folders files list, select the check box for each item you want to back up
5. Change the .pst file name shown. Or, to select a different folder, click Browse, navigate to the location you want, and then click Open
   Note: The default file name and location where the .pst file is saved is shown in the File location box
6. To have Microsoft Outlook automatically remind you to make a backup copy of this file, select the “Remind me to backup every x days” check box, and then type the number of days between 1 and 999
7. Click OK
8. Click Save Backup
   Note: The items selected will not be backed up until you quit Outlook

You can download Personal Folders Backup add-in for Office Outlook 2002/2003/2007 from Microsoft Download Center (OGA validation required). Or, you can also download the setup file pfbackup.exe from the following direct download links:

English (US) edition
Spanish edition
German edition
Simplified Chinese edition
Greek edition
Russian edition

Notes

• Personal Folders Backup tool only backs up .pst files. If you have an Exchange Server mailbox, your server mailbox folders should already be backed up by your Exchange Server administrator.
• If you are using an East Asian operating system with an English version of Microsoft Office, you cannot use this download.

The Personal Folders Backup tool is designed for use in Outlook 2002 and later, and provides a quick and easy way to back up your Outlook data to your hard disk or network. After you back up your information, you can even copy these backups of your Outlook data to a removable media such as a CD, DVD, or external hard drive. The backup files are exact copies of the original files and are saved in the same file format. You can receive periodic reminders to back up your files.

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What is the difference between Hibernate and Standby in Windows XP?

Standby and hibernate are 2 extremely useful functions that you can use because of the time it saves you from booting up your computer. Once you’re done with your work session, and need to leave your desk, simply choose standby or hibernate. These two sleep modes are fantastic for laptops as well.

But what’s the difference? Hibernate saves an image of your current session with all open applications and files. Then it powers down your computer (exactly as if you had turned it off). When you next switch your computer on, you will see exactly the same applications and files open as you had left them. In this state, your computer is exactly as though it’s turned off — no power is needed in hibernate mode.

Standby is a sleep mode that reduces the power that your computer uses to almost nothing. The keyword is “almost”. When you use standby mode, your computer cuts the power to your screen, hard drive, peripheral devices…in fact, anything except your computer’s memory (RAM) is cut. This is because the RAM will maintain a copy of your working session.

I’ve had people tell me that moving your notebook around while it’s in standby mode will shake up the harddrive when it’s spinning and cause hard disk problems. Utter rubbish. The hard drive is powered down during standby, much less in hibernate mode.

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Why Do People Recommend Alt-Tab For Task Management?

Now this is something that I don’t get — why do people love alt-tab so much? I have tried using alt-tab, and it seems like it’s much faster to click on the open tasks on the taskbar than to cycle through the alt-tab list, looking for the program that you want. This is similar to Expose, or its Windows equivalent of TopDesk…it sure looks pretty, but it isn’t as fast as just clicking on what window you want to reopen. At least, that’s what I think.

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Best Free Windows Calculator Replacement

Moffsoft FreeCalc is a freeware calculator application that is the best Windows calculator alternative. That’s right — you can completely replace the in-built calculator within Windows with this freeware tool because it provides so much more functionality.

Firstly, the calculator is resizable, so gone are the days that you had to carefully click on each number (yes, I know you can type it in on the keyboard as well). With Moffsoft FreeCalc, you can expand the calculator window so that it even fills up the entire screen if you wish! This makes pressing those buttons SO MUCH easier. Just check out a screenshot of it running on my laptop here:

Secondly, you get a useful tape (optional - can be turned off) that is displayed on the right of the main calculator window, and it’ll record down all the operations that you’ve performed.

Just these two additional features alone have made me switch from the calculator in Windows to this great little freeware application. Try it out! Moffsoft FreeCalc can be downloaded here. And if you want a premium version that comes with even more features (and I mean A LOT), then you’ll be pleased to know that Moffsoft offers a premium version of their calculator as well. Want even more calculator software? Then check out this site, because it offers a really wide range of freeware and software downloads.

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Recursively Delete Selected Files or Folders In Windows

I was looking around for a way to recursively delete files and folders of a specific name in Windows. For example, imagine having “/folderA/folderB/file1.doc” and “/folderA/folderC/file1.doc”, and I wanted to remove all instances of file1.doc. Now imagine this file1.doc being presented in hundreds of folders. Deleting each file manually would drive anyone crazy.

I know Unix has a more powerful commandline interface, so operations like this should be a snap, but I was certain Windows had a similar functionality too. So I went about searching for a simple solution to do so. I was so intent on finding a simple batch file or DOS command that would do the recursive delete that I didn’t think of anything else until it suddenly slammed into me like a bullet train.

I could just use the search function in Windows! Yes that’s right — the normal Windows search is already a powerful enough function that accepts wildcards and does recursive searching. So I went to Windows search, specified my folder, and put in my filename. Sure enough, all the hundred or more instances of that file popped up almost instantly. From there it was just a matter of selecting all of them and deleting them. Everything took less than 10 seconds!

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