Changing computers- going from a PC to a laptop.  Can someone please
give me step-by-step instructions on the easiest and safest way to
completely copy Outlook 2000 (all emails, address book, etc.) from my
"old" PC to my laptop?
PC is Windows 98, laptop is XP Professional- both can be connected to
network simultaneously if needed.

Hi esarkissian-ga,

Thanks for your question, it is clearly a question many of us have had
while being moved from version to version of MS Outlook :)

The high level sequence of steps that need to be taken are as follows:

1. Install Outlook 2000 on your laptop
2. Export a Personal Folder file from your desktop Outlook
installation
3. Import your Personal Folder file into your notebook Outlook
installation

Below are some other options you may want to consider as well:

4. Automating the Backing Up of Personal Folders
5. Backing Up Outlook Settings Files
6. Exporting and Importing Rules

The folks at Microsoft have clearly anticipated this issue coming up
and therefore I refer you to their detailed, step-by-step instructions
for undertaking each of the above steps:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;196492&

I hope that helps in your transition...if you have any problems
understanding any of the information above please feel free to post a
clarification and I will respond promptly :)

Cheers!

answerguru-ga

excellent, thank you.

Just for future refrence Outlook 2000 and into Outlook XP store all of
their relevent information, email, contacts, calander, notes, tasks
and journal all within the same file.  Typically called [outlook.pst]
it can be called almost anything but will always have the [*.pst]
extension.

You can copy this file to an off-computer storage device such as a Zip
Drive, CD-RW or an external hard drive and have all of your current
information backed up to at least that point.

One note is that the [*.pst] files can, depending on the frequency of
email deletion and file attachment storage, can grow quite large,
often over 100MB in size.  Within Outlook XP you can view the storage
file size to get a good idea of what you will need to backup your
[*.pst] files.