Export Your Webmail Contacts List

I heard a scary story on the radio the other day. I was listening to Leo Laporte's Tech Guy call-in show on KFI and someone called in to say that clients had recently lost all of the contacts from their online email account. And there was no way to get them back. They were devastated. Years and years of email addresses and other info, gone in a flash.

The caller was recommending that everyone immediately export their contacts list so that they will have a backup in case they run into this sort of situation, and Leo agreed.

They were using webmail of some sort, and it doesn't really matter which one - AOL, Yahoo!, Gmail, hotmail or anything else. The point is that it's foolish to rely on them to keep your data safe. It's rare for a disaster to happen, but it's not impossible, as these poor people learned.

Each system will have different methods for exporting a file with all of your contact information, so I won't try to walk you through it here. But check it out now, before it's too late.

Flash Drives

One of the easiest ways to back up the files on your computer and keep them safe is to put them on a flash drive. What's a flash drive? Geez Louise, where have you been the last 10 years?

Flash drives, also known as thumb drives, are like itsy-bitsy hard drives. They're small enough to carry around on a keychain, or around your neck (some even come with lanyards so you can do just that). You just plug them into the USB port on your computer and they act like a hard drive.

When they were first available they wouldn't hold much data, but I saw one on Amazon just now that will hold 128GB. That's bigger than the hard drive on my last Dell desktop. They're asking $375 for it, but the smaller ones are dirt cheap. You can get a 2GB model for under $10. That's a lot of storage.

They have a lot of advantages over CDs and DVDs for backup, too. For one thing, they're solid-state, which means they don't have any moving parts. So they can get knocked around quite a bit without breaking. I've lost CDs by accidentally scratching them, and one by leaving a post-it note on top and having the surface of the disk peel away when I took it off. Who knew? Flash drives are also generally formatted so that you can use the same one on both Macs and PCs, which is handy.

You can buy them at almost any place that sells office supplies. My local hardware store sells them. They're all about the same, so don't worry about which brand to get. Get the cheapest one they have. And back up your stuff.

Why I Hate Outlook

Because it stores all your important information in one big file. Yep, that's right. ONE BIG FILE. It's called a .pst file, and it contains everything you've ever entered into it.

So that if something happens to that file, you have now lost all of your contacts, all of your notes, all of your calendar info, and all of your email. ALL AT ONCE.

And don't think it won't happen. Hard drives crash. Sodas get spilled onto laptops. Oops, sorry, your stuff is gone.

I have been trying to wean my husband off  Outlook for years. I first started nagging him about the issue a few years ago when his .pst file was a litle over 2GB. It was behaving erratically, refusing to open, refusing to close, and being very, very slow. That's when I discovered that that version of Outlook wasn't designed to handle files over 2GB. He was supposed to be archiving his older emails to keep the file size down. But he didn't want to do that because he likes having them close at hand.

So we upgraded to a newer version of Outlook. Problem solved, in his mind. But I started to worry. And nag, "Please switch to a different program".  But he was resistant because he was used to Outlook, and he didn't want to have to learn a new system.

And so the file keeps growing. And growing. And growing. It's now a 5GB ball of wax.  And to me it looks just like a time-bomb. It's too big to back up to a CD, and he doesn't have a DVD burner. I back it up to my computer over our wireless network and it takes for-ever.  And since it's a pain in the butt to do, I don't do it as often as I should. When it goes he's probably going to lose a few weeks worth of stuff. And I'm going to have to bite my tongue.

So, if you're one of those people who has an automated backup program (anybody?) or if you back up your Outlook file to an external device every day (anybody?), then by all means,use Outlook to your heart's content. It's a terrific program, very sophisticated, very versatile, and you already know how to use it.

But don't come crying to me when you lose all your stuff.

You aren’t backing up your stuff, are you?

It's ok to admit it. Hardly anybody does on a regular basis. But you're going to be sorry. Here's why: Try this simple mental exercise. Imagine that the next time you press the power button on your computer it doesn't start up.

It's that simple. It's going to happen to everybody. Computers break. And when they do they take all of your stuff down with them. Photos, letters, email. Poof. All gone. Unless you have them backed up.

Backing up just means having copies of everything you care about.

And your files need to be copied to someplace other than  your computer. If your computer stops working it won't make any difference how many copies you have on it, they'll all be gone.

So, what should you be doing?

I think the ideal backup strategy involves having at least three copies of everything you  cherish. The following strategy is called the 3-2-1- Rule by Peter Krogh, and I first heard about it on Leo Laporte's TWIT podcasts :

3 copies, on two kinds of media, one of which is off-site

1) The original, on your hard drive.

2) A copy on external media of some sort. This could be on a flash drive (these are cheap and easy to store) or an external hard drive that you connect with a cable to the main computer.

3)  Another copy that is stored off-site somewhere.

That last item is really important. Off-site. Because if your house burns down, or is hit by an earthquake, or you get flooded out, it sure would be nice to have copies of your stuff somewhere else, wouldn't it?

You can accomplish off-site backup any number of ways. You can take your home backup copies (on drives or disks) to work and leave them there, and vice versa. You could give them to a friend for safekeeping. One of Leo's friends mails his backups to his mom every week. Or you can subscribe to any number of free web services that will let you store your stuff online: Dropbox,  Box.net,  Skydrive,  ADrive. Those of you using Macs can subscribe to Apple's MobileMe service.

But the thing to remember about any backup strategy is that it only works if you remember to do it.  So the easiest and safest thing to do is to set up a system that backs things up for you. In other words, take yourself out of the equation. There are a number of paid web services that allow you to do this. I use Carbonite, but there are others on the market that do the same thing. You set up an account online and then their software automatically uploads your files without any attention from you. If your computer ever crashes you can simply download your files from their site.

So no excuses, ok? Back your stuff up.