Forwarding E-Mail to New Box at Same Address

Q. What is the procedure for saving e-mail with the sender’s address to transfer it to another computer? Both machines are using Internet Explorer and Outlook Express.

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A. Assuming you’re using Outlook Express 5.x, there’s a very nice and completely free utility called DBXtract, which you can find at https://chatt.net/~scochran/DBXtract.htm. This probably will work on Outlook Express 6.x as well, but no guarantees. You’ll need to have a special group of files on your Windows system, which you can download through that page.

Once you’re set up and installed, follow the instructions to extract e-mail messages from Outlook Express and store them in a folder of your choosing. If you’re talking about a lot of files, we’d recommend a Zip drive, which is easy to install, or a recordable CD drive, which is harder to install but offers cheaper media and lots more storage space.

Move the files to the other machine, using whatever media you’ve chosen. Without Outlook Express open, you should be able to drag the copied files into Outlook Express with no trouble.

If this all sounds like too much trouble, there’s an alternative solution. In Outlook Express, open the e-mail you want to move and then forward it to your own address. Then shut down that machine, fire up the new machine and retrieve the e-mail. You’ll have all the information in the e-mail--including the original address--on your new machine. The downside is that the forwarded e-mail looks like it came from you, which can complicate your life, depending on how you’re organizing things.

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Dave Wilson is The Times’ personal technology columnist. Submit questions to Tech Q&A; at techtimes@latimes.com. Please be specific about your computer and operating system and include a daytime phone number.