How to Change the Storage Location for Attachments in Outlook Express
http://www.itechbot.com/articles/4277/1/How-to-Change-the-Storage-Location-for-Attachments-in-Outlook-Express/Page1.html
Jules Peters
PCauthorities.com is a tech-related site dedicated to providing solutions to your every day computing problems. For more free Outlook Express troubleshooting tips n' tweaks, check out what the professional IT bloggers have in store for you at www.PCauthorities.com. By Jules Peters
Published on 10/28/2008
Part of PC maintenance is managing your e-mail. And the biggest storage requirement with e-mail is attachments. Choosing a different location for your Outlook Express e-mail attachments can help manage your PC storage efficiently.
Outlook Express, as a standard e-mail client in Windows XP, allows you to receive e-mails with attachments. When you receive an e-mail with attachments in Outlook Express, the attachments, can be saved to disk as files. The disk location where the e-mail attachments are stored in Outlook Express is fixed during the installation.
By default this might not be the most suitable location, since your system disk is used for storing the attachments, and using the same disk can impact performance (disk full errors or heavy fragmentation).
It is better to use a different hard sik or at least partition on the disk.
If you want to change the location where attachments are stored, you can. This is not possible from Outlook Express itself, but requires a change in the Windows registry. Follow the steps below to change the storage location for attachments in Outlook Express:
1. Start the Registry Editor. From the Windows Start menu, select Run. In the Run box, type regedit and click OK.
2. In the Registry Editor, locate the following key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows /CurrentVersion/Explorer/User Shell Folders
3. Right-click the Personal entry in this key, and select Modify in the popup menu.
4. Change the path in the Edit String dialog box to the new location for the attachments, and click OK.
5. Close the Registry Editor. Select Exit from the File menu.
Each user has a separate location for storing the attachments, but the location is linked to the %USERPROFILE% environment variable, so only one change to the registry is needed. Do realize that if you change this location to an absolute, fixed path, without the %USERPROFILE% environment variable, the attachments for all computer users will be stored at that location.
If you want to check the value of the %USERPROFILE% variable, start a command prompt and then type: set
This will show all the environment variables, including the %USERPROFILE%.
Changing the storage location for Outlook Express attachments as described above allows for easier maintenance. If you need to make a backup of your attachments, just select the new storage path for the backup.
In the same way, you can consider changing the Store Folder in Outlook Express. This is the location where the actual e-mail is stored (in ".dbx" files). The same reasons apply, intensive e-mail use means these DBX files will grow and get fragmented. For performance and maintenance reasons you could consider moving them.
Changing the Store Folder can be done from Outlook Express itself. Simply select the Maintenance tab in the Options dialog box. Then click the Store Folder button, followed by the Change button.
By default this might not be the most suitable location, since your system disk is used for storing the attachments, and using the same disk can impact performance (disk full errors or heavy fragmentation).
It is better to use a different hard sik or at least partition on the disk.
If you want to change the location where attachments are stored, you can. This is not possible from Outlook Express itself, but requires a change in the Windows registry. Follow the steps below to change the storage location for attachments in Outlook Express:
1. Start the Registry Editor. From the Windows Start menu, select Run. In the Run box, type regedit and click OK.
2. In the Registry Editor, locate the following key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows /CurrentVersion/Explorer/User Shell Folders
3. Right-click the Personal entry in this key, and select Modify in the popup menu.
4. Change the path in the Edit String dialog box to the new location for the attachments, and click OK.
5. Close the Registry Editor. Select Exit from the File menu.
Each user has a separate location for storing the attachments, but the location is linked to the %USERPROFILE% environment variable, so only one change to the registry is needed. Do realize that if you change this location to an absolute, fixed path, without the %USERPROFILE% environment variable, the attachments for all computer users will be stored at that location.
If you want to check the value of the %USERPROFILE% variable, start a command prompt and then type: set
This will show all the environment variables, including the %USERPROFILE%.
Changing the storage location for Outlook Express attachments as described above allows for easier maintenance. If you need to make a backup of your attachments, just select the new storage path for the backup.
In the same way, you can consider changing the Store Folder in Outlook Express. This is the location where the actual e-mail is stored (in ".dbx" files). The same reasons apply, intensive e-mail use means these DBX files will grow and get fragmented. For performance and maintenance reasons you could consider moving them.
Changing the Store Folder can be done from Outlook Express itself. Simply select the Maintenance tab in the Options dialog box. Then click the Store Folder button, followed by the Change button.