Recover address book and email - need help ASAP

My aunt was instructed to reformat and reinstall windows by Dell and lost all of her email and address book information.

Using software I have been able to view her "old" hard drive and it appears that most of it is intact.

Please help me: Where does Netscape 7.1 (this is what they were using) keep it's email and address book, and what would the file names be? I'm not a Netscape user and have very old Netscape experience (way back in Netscape 3 and 4 days).

I would like to return her computer to her ASAP, but as soon as I return it I will loose the ability to review her old hard drive, as they will slowly overwrite it. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

The computer was running Windows XP, and they were using Netscape 7.1. That is all the information they can tell me.

Thank you.

 

This should help with finding the address book (abook.mab).

Corrupt, or Disappearing Netscape 7 / Mozilla Address Book

 

Welcome to the Forum, djoyn!

The Profiles folder (which contains all profile data) is located here:
C:\Documents and Settings\user_name\Application Data\Mozilla\Profiles

Drill down to the xxxxxxxx.slt folder, and there you will find the Address Book: abook.mab, cookies.txt, xxxxxxxx.s (passwords), key3.db (needed when moving Password file).

In the xxxxxxxx.slt folder you will find the Mail subfolder, and within the Mail folder, the Mail Account folder, which contains the Mail.

If you plan to copy the Inbox, Sent, Drafts, etc., files to the newly formatted drive, do not copy the files with an MSF extension, e.g., Inbox.msf, Sent.msf, etc.

Also keep in mind when copying the Inbox, etc., to the newly formatted drive, that you will overwrite any Mail that has been received since the reformat. To avoid this happening, rename the files, before copying them, to OLDinbox, OLDSent, etc.

Let us know if you need further help.

 

I installed Netscape on my computer and tried it, but the address book still doesn't appear. I copied the abook.mab into the new profiles directory (mine). Is there another step I have to take?

They have now informed me that they want to use Outlook Express, so I'm trying to also convert it to OE format.

Thank you!

 

djoyn,

If you copied the abook.mab file to this folder:
C:\Documents and Settings\user_name\Application Data\Mozilla\Profiles
\profilename\xxxxxxxx.slt
did you let it overwrite the existing file? If so, their Address Book should be viewable.

What you can do if they wish to use IE/OE:
Export the Address Book as an LDIF file

Open Netscape 7
Click on the Window Tab, and select Address Book
In the Address Book, click on Tools
Select: Export
Name the file and save the LDIF file to the HDD
Then open OE, and Import the LDIF file.

That should work...