not much out of ten

[calimac]

So after much travail I have a new computer. I still don't have access to my e-mail files, apparently because Outlook Express, my old client which no longer exists, made it essentially impossible to export files into any other format, something I would have thought would have been illegal, or - more to the point - immoral by the time that program was created. But apparently not.

During my enforced downtime I had been reading an old story in which young people sit around complaining about how romantic relationships never work. It isn't that anyone wants them to dysfunction, they just do. I never felt that way about romantic relationships, but it sure does sound familiar regarding my relationships with computers. Why are they so difficult and why, whenever I get a new version of something, is it so hard to find my way around? I spent far more time than I should have trying to find the desktop button in Windows 10, or, for that matter, the bookmarks pulldown window in my new copy of Firefox.

Worst of all is that about a third of the Windows taskbar at the bottom of the screen is now taken up by a box reading "Ask me anything." I investigated this and it didn't take long to recognize. Oh, the stupid icon is gone, and it's not chasing you around the screen any more. But it's the paper clip come back again. I knew it of old. You can't fool me. I can't figure out where in it to type my question, but that would be my first question, and my second would be, How can I make you go away?

And a lot of other things, and I've barely started. This is why I put off getting a new computer for so long, because the process of transferring your life is so tiring and time-consuming; and why I went for the latest version of Windows even though I'm told Windows 7 (which yes, they still sell) might suit my style better: to put off for as long as possible the next time I have to do this.

Comments

[spacecrab.livejournal.com]

I believe Outlook Express allows messages to be exported to Windows Mail format, which is importable by Mozilla Thunderbird. (I haven't actually done this, but I've read about it, I don't know if you can start Outlook Express on the old machine to export its contents to a stored message folder http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-files/transferring-outlook-express-files-from-old-xp/533fe43b-9b0c-47f1-b208-c8e20c10ec5d?auth=1

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

No, I can't start Outlook Express on the old computer. The OS (XP) was corrupted.

The files were intact, though, and what they're doing is a painstaking file-by-file conversion process into what they at first told me was some kind of Excel format from which I could extract the data, but that would leave my files a mess.

However, when I called them up to tell them what you just said, and suggested that it could be enabled by copying off the original files and reinstalling XP and Outlook Express from scratch (I've still got the original disks), putting the files back and then extracting them, they told me they were having better luck than they'd told me earlier in getting the files intact, and that even the attachments (mostly doc & pdf) were still there, which they'd said at first would not happen. I'd be sorry to loose those and almost as sorry to lose the file directory structure (I had my mailboxes in quite an elaborate tree structure), but apparently I'm going to get that back after all, whew. It will take a few days for them to finish, but a few days I have.