Why did I want to do this? A friend bought a new laptop which had a trial version of Outlook 2007 – Once the trial had run out, they had to move to something else, and WLM is only found on Windows 7. Outlook Express is no more.

Let’s start …..

Note: I did all of the below on my friend’s PC while Outlook was still installed. Once I ahd imported all my email into WLM, I then uninstalled Outlook.

* Download a program called Mailstore from here. This free program is for archiving of mail, but also is perfect for achieving what we want to do.

* Run Mailstore. The first thing you need to run the archive process. Follow your nose and (obviusly) select Outlook as your email program. Here is a screenshot of the archive window:

* You will now need to export your email into a format that WLM will recognise:

With the options for Export, select “file system” and the message format will be “EML”:

Browse to any folder on your hard drive or thumb drive and kick off the process.

* OK, Now you are ready to import into WLM. From the File menu, select import>messages and then select the ‘Windows mail’ format. Browse to your folder where you exported all the mail and start importing.

Once finished you should be ready to go!

When I did the above on an another PC, I got a message to say that there was no files in the folder or another program has locked the folders. When i worked out which ones had not been imported, I just click and dragged them over to my WLM inbox from Window Explorer. End result still the same.

It’s called Xobni, and works with Outlook 2003/2007 on XP and Vista Operating Systems.

One of the many features it has is when you open an email, the Xobni sidebar will show you all related emails from the sender, how many emails you send receive the them, and even a trend graph of what time you get emails from him/her.

That is one of many. Check out the Youtube video below for a tour of this plugin:

Most of the time if you restart you won’t have any problems but you would like to know what caused it, and how to stop it happening again.

Fortunately you don’t have to look for a program on the net to but, download and install. Your have the solution on the computer right now.

On you PC there is a program called scanpst.exe.

It is generally located at C:\Program Files\Common Files\System\MSMAPI\1033\SCANPST.EXE (or somewhere very similar – if you can’t find it search for the file in Windows Explorer).

Simply run the file and follow the prompts. You will be advised if any problems have been found and asked if you want to fix them. Sometimes you will have the program twice.

Hopefully that will solve your problems.

This is a handy app for anyone who gets tired of switching back and forth between the web and Outlook to email directions; plus, you can totally integrate it with your task planner so your travel time is nicely aligned with your meetings, schedule, outings, etc. Windows Live Local for Outlook is a free download from here.

HKEY_CURRENT USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Options

and add a string value called DefaultPath then enter the folder path.

The next time you use the File, Save attachment menu, Outlook’s save explorer opens to that folder.

Disclaimer: Changing registry entries is done at the user’s own risk. I take no responsibility for any problems relating to the regaistry change mentioned above – but I have tried it and it works!