With MS Office 2007 or 2000 just open Outlook and the setup window appears. Probably the same for other versions. Follow along and at some point you will probably be asked if you wish to make Outlook your default mail handler.

I have just loaded Outlook on a new notebook, Outlook 2002. I've used this version of Outlook since 2002, but alas that notebook did a big crash. The good news, I had all but the last two days of message folders on a back up drive, in a folder called "Exchange". Now, on my old XP home there was a folder called "OutlookFolders" which had "Exchange" and other details in it. So, all I need to do is copy the back-up data into the new computer's "OutlookFolders", but I can't find them, nor can the XP search. I do have folders maked to shoe hidden. Any help would be appreciated.

I do not have an answer but rather an observation. There *s h o u l d* be a way. But it depends how complex or expensive the solution might be. For example, I notice that my desktop at work gets synchronized with my home PC so all folders always have the same content. Now granted, people at work might have done a lot of things without telling me that makes this seamless, piece-of-cake looking to me. Your two mail programs are accessing mail files located in each pc and that is what makes them be not in sync. If pc1 could access the mail file in pc2 instead of the mail file in pc2, that would help. Or if both could access the mail file by storing it on an external hard drive, maybe that would help. Let's see if one of the gurus here can give some advice. I have a new pc that could need this feature.

The way that I understand it, you will need to download Windows Live as an email client if you want to continue to get Hotmail into your computer. And you need to have at least XP on your computer to do that. You will, however, still be able to use Hotmail at the MSN website. An alternative is to use another POP email address, such as Gmail, and you can continue to use Outlook Express. IMHO, this is just another way that Microsoft is forcing people to upgrade their operating system when, in fact, the old operating system is doing all that one wants it to do. I am using 2000 PRO and it does all that I need it to do. I just today set up 2 friend's Outlook Express to get mail from Gmail and they are going to dump Hotmail. Smitty Smitty