Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with WindowsXP and outlook

Help me backup my dad's computer and emails!

sperose — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 13:57:35 -0800

My dad needs help with total computer backup (particularly Outlook). Computer in question is an older Dell model, running Windows XP. No one in our family is a computer genius. More information and particular stickyness inside. My dad has been reading a lot of articles in the newspapers lately about the dangers of HDs failing and whatnot. We've had a history of failures (namely my computer, 3 drives and counting) and so it's a bit freaky. He had a severe HD failure a few years back and his solution was to take it to Best Buy and have them attempt to save as much information as they could. They burned it to CD and when he bought a new HD, he had them install it along with another HD (so under My Computer it comes up as Local Disk C: and Backup D:) where all of his backed up files from the failed HD are.
He wants to backup his files (basically only Excel spreadsheets and Word docs) as well as all his email which he reads through Outlook and his IE favorites.

How can he do this so if both the HDs fail, he has some way of getting to his files and his emails?

He's looked into using a flash drive (which is what I use to half-assedly backup my stuff, basically only important documents) but he's not sure what would be the best way. Something that is absurdly easy to understand and explain and possibly able to be completely automated would be best.

(Like I said before, no one in our family is exactly a computer genius. He hates Firefox, and believes everything that Microsoft puts out is golden, FWIW.)

Help me AskMefi!

Lost Outlook File?

alightfoot — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 00:21:11 -0800

Where's my Outlook data after using the Files and Settings Transfer Wizard? I ran the wizard before doing a clean install on my laptop. Now, I can't find it when I migrate back. Is there something I did wrong? I have done it before and not had a problem, but now, I don't know.

Can you help??

Word mail merge to pairs of people at a time - possible

Coffeemate — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 12:04:11 -0800

Can I use Word's mail merge functionality to send merged emails to pairs of people? I would like to send emails to multiple pairs of people, and I would like them to both get the same message. I'm getting hung up on how to send the message to both Alan and Bob, where the message is sent to alan@email.com and bob@email.com, so that they can select "reply all" to the message and speak with each other. I also need to send the message to Carl and Dave, and Eric and Frank, etc. etc.

So far, I've got an Excel file that has the following fields:
FirstName1 (Alan), FirstName2 (Bob), Email1 (alan@email.com), Email2 (bob@email.com), and Emails ("alan@email.com, bob@email.com").

When I try to send the email from Word, I click on the "merge to email" button, and all appears to be fine. I'm expecting the email to get sent to both of the addresses in the Emails field of my spreadsheet. However, the messages don't appear to actually get sent, as I haven't received the test messages I've sent to myself, and they don't show up in my Outlook sent items.

Should I be using a different character in the "Emails" field to separate the two addresses? Neither a comma nor a semicolon has worked. What other solutions exist for a situation like this? I'm sending a note to some 450+ pairs, so an automated process is strongly preferred.

I'm running: Word 2002, Outlook 2002, Windows XP, Microsoft Exchange. I can try to answer any other questions about my setup that could help figure this out!

XP won't let me type in Thai.

Pericles — Wed, 18 Feb 2004 08:57:14 -0800

Internationalising email in WinXP. My wife can read emails sent to her in Thai script using Outlook on our Win XP machine, but I can't work out how to configure the machine so that she can type in Thai (using out Thai/ English keyboard) in a non-html email. Outlook help mentions configuring using Microsoft Office Tools from the program manager - but that requires using the XP discs, which we don't have as it was preinstalled by the PC manufacturer. Anyone got any ideas? I don't want to change the language of the whole O/S/ (there's a download from microsoft.com to do that) as I don't read Thai. We're by no means married to Outlook; Moz, Opera etc would be fine. We have Thai fonts.