Inside Outlook Express - Tips and Ideas

This simple method works in all versions of Outlook Express. The archive consists of an OE message serving as an "envelope".

Create a New Mail Message. Enter the name you want for the archive in the Subject line.
Drag the messages you wish to archive from the OE message list and drop them into the New Mail Message. They will be added as attachments.
Click File| Save as... and save the message to any Windows folder as type *.eml, and close the New Mail Message window. (The resulting file can then be compressed in a zip file to greatly reduce its size.)
To restore the archived messages to an OE mail folder, double-click the saved *.eml file. Select all the attachments and drag them into an OE mail folder. You can also of course simply double-click on a single attachment to read it.
You can also drag messages from a newsgroup and drop them into the "envelope". To restore them, you must drag them into a mail folder, not a newsgroup folder. After restoring, you can turn on thread view in mail by clicking View| Current View| Groups messages by conversation. This setting is independent from the similar setting in newsgroup folders.

For a more comprehensive approach to archiving messages, see Partial Backup and Restore.