Trying to Move Favorites & Contacts from Win98 to XP

A few months ago I was given a newer computer with XP Home. Ever since I have been trying to move my Favorites & Outlook Express Contacts from the old Win98 SE machine to the new machine so I can send the old one to the recyclers.

I tried setting up a network and using the file transfer wizard - no go!

I tried exporting - another failure.

I tried copying to floppy and importing - not a chance! (didn't recognize files)

I tried copying to floppy and drag & drop - again no.

A friend gave me a SanDisk Cruzer mini (USB drive - SDCZ2-256) so I could copy & drag & drop - but my old machine insisted on searching for a driver but none showed up for Win98 SE. (I even tried a few things from SanDisk forums but couldn't get it to work).

I feel like this should be easy but it is proving anything but easy. If you have any ideas and can help me with step-by-step instructions it would be appreciated.
Thanks - Cody

 

I have been through this, and it is a pain the first time that you do it. To export your email contacts, open Outlook Express and towards the right hand side of the screen you will see a tab that is labeled Adresses. Single click on it and it should show a menu with import and export being two of the options. Click on export and choose a location ( My Documents is an easy one ) and give the file a name ( 123, mine, etc. ) and it will save it as a WAB file. This is the file that you want to copy to the floppy.

For Internet Explorer, open it, single click on the favorites tab and the options should be in the menu to import and export. Click on the bookmarks folder and export it to My Documents. It should be there with whatever name that you choose to give it as an . htm file.

These two files are what you should copy to your floppy disk for importing into XP, as they will have the right file extensions. Copy both of the files mentioned above to your floppy and transfer them to the My Documents folder on the XP computer. Then open Outlook Express in XP, go to the Adresses tab, click and choose import, browse to the My Documents folder and choose the file that you created with the WAB extension. Import that and all your email contacts addresses should be there.

Processe for Internet Explorer is basically the same!

Hope this helps!

 

Plodr;
Thanks so very much. In all my searching that page never came up - it works great now.
Thanks - Cody

 

Novice;

I so appreciate the help - I've been trying to get this done since April and with your advice got it done in one afternoon.

Quick question: As I want to send the old computer to the recyclers is there an easy way to delete all of my Outlook Express addresses and all Favorites without wrecking the programs for whoever gets this computer?
Thanks again - Cody

 

Safest way to remove your personal stuff would be to "0" the hard drive and reinstall the OS. If you don't wish to go to this much trouble, then you can manually delete them. Hope this helps!

 

Thanks again Novice;
I wanted to leave the programs intact for the next user so I manually deleted. Thanks for all your help. :celebrate
Cody

 

You didn't ask this but if you want to copy your old Emails then do this:

On your memory stick make folders corresponding to inbox, sent items, whatever in OE.
Open up OE and Windows Explorer side by side with OE showing the contents of the inbox and WE showing the empty inbox folder.
Select any email in OE inbox
hold down the control key and hit the A key : this selects all the emails
drag the emails from OE to the empty WE folder and drop

reverse this procedure to place them in the new OE inbox on the other machine

repeat for other folders

Warning for some reason 'copy' doesn't seem to do this correctly.

 

Thanks for the suggestion. I didn't use OutlookExpress for email (except when I wanted to send broadcast email) so there were only 5 or 6 old emails and I just deleted those. However, this looks handy and I will keep it for the future.
Thanks - Cody