This is a particularly embarassing post for me to write. I should have known better. I can't believe the mess I am in.
I went to business school; my major was Management Information Systems or M.I.S. This is your basic business management degree, with a whole bunch of business-related computer courses thrown in. In other words, I can't write video game code, but I can manage a business using computers to full efficiency. At least, that's what I am supposed to be qualified for.
So that's why this post is particularly embarassing.
This is a post about backing things up. Most of you are going to roll your eyes at this point and think-- rightfully so-- that backing up data is about as basic as you can possibly get.
Well, I back-up all of my client files regularly. I have all of my mortgage loans stored on my own C-drive and then backed up to two separate hard drives. I am absolutely anal-retentive about backing important data up. As I mentioned, I have three copies of everything in my business database.
However, I completely neglected my...uh..."unimportant data."
Earlier this week, I was having some problems with my computer and...make a long story short...I dropped my hard drive on the floor, from about 5 feet up. In short, the hard drive is now unreadable. (Yes, I did take it to a data recovery place; no luck.)
Did I lose business data? Or loan files? Or personal tax returns? Nah! I backed all that stuff up.
What I did lose, was hundreds of emails, emailed receipts, my address book and basically-- everything that was in my Outlook program. I never thought about backing up my inbox, with those hundreds of emails that I keep. So I didn't lose any "important" business-type data, but people that emailed me a few days ago are never going to get a response.
Also, I regularly use the "search" function in Outlook to find an email that is buried or maybe in my "deleted items" folder. I just didn't realize how reliant I was on Outlook. I really screwed myself with this.
If you don't use Microsoft Outlook, I would suggest Googling your own email program to find out how to do this, and I would do it fairly often. I have never had a C: drive completely fail before, but clearly it can happen and especially if you drop it. Ugh.
How To Back Up Every Email and Contact in Outlook:
Outlook stores all of it's data in a .pst file, which stands for "personal file folder." I don't know why you need to know that, but there you go.
1. On the File menu, click "Import And Export".
2. Click Export To File, and then click Next.
3. Choose Personal Folder File (.pst) , and then click Next.
4. Click the folder that you want to export the .pst file to, and then click Next.
5. Click the Browse button, and then select the location to save the .pst file. (I always save back-up files like this in very obvious places, like "My Documents."
6. In the File Name box, type a descriptive file name for the .pst file, and then click "OK". (I would humbly suggest that if you are backing up today- for example- you title the file something like Outlook_Backup_10_05_07.pst That way, if you collect a few of these over time, you can easily see which one is your most recent.)
7. Click Finish and then save a duplicate copy of your PST file somewhere. CD's are so cheap nowadays, it'd probably be worth burning a CD once a week.
That's it. It's so simple and so obvious. I just know that most of us aren't very diligent about backing up our email, but if you were exchanging emails with a brand new client just a couple of days ago...and you lost your hard drive today, you might be in trouble. Just like I am. I'm backing up my email every day from now on. I can spare the 2 minutes.
If you use Outlook Express, rather than plain old Outlook, here is an article about backing up O.E.
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