The entire backup process consists of the following steps:
Choose what to backup
At this step you have to decide which identities and respective items you are going to backup. The estimated size of the backup is displayed beneath the list of items to backup. (screenshot)
Enter backup filename
Now you should decide where to place the backup file and how to name it. For your convenience, SafeMail suggests the file name based on current date and places it in your "My Documents" folder (when run for the first time) or in the same folder where you placed your previous backup.
Here you can choose to protect your backup file with password: tick the Protect with password checkbox and enter the password twice into provided fields. Standard ZIP encryption will be used. For increased security it is recommended to use passwords longer than 6 - 8 characters consisting of letters in both lower and upper case and digits. But don't forget your password -- you will not be able to restore data from backup without specifying the correct password!
You may want to store the resulting backup on multiple disks. In order to split the file click Span the backup file over multiple volumes and choose the size of one volume from the list. You may also specify a custom size in kilobytes. Please note that the size must be entered as a number. No symbols other than digits are allowed.
When splitting the backup file it is sometimes desirable to save volumes to a hard drive prior to moving them to a removable medium. If free space on the hard drive is scarce make use of Pause before each volume option. This will allow you to suspend backing up on each new volume, so that you can move the last volume to a disk, thus freeing space for the next one.
Tick the Create a standalone restorer executable to create the backup that will be able to restore by itself without the necessity of having SafeMail installed on the machine where restore will be performed. Choosing this option will add some insignificant overhead to the size of the resulting backup file. (screenshot)
If you currently have Outlook Express running you will be prompted to close it. Since there may be some changes that Outlook Express is keeping in memory and has not yet stored to disk, it is recommended to close Outlook Express before performing the backup. Ignoring this warning may possibly cause incomplete or inconsistent backup. (screenshot)
Ready to backup
Everything is ready for the backup to be performed. Review the information you have entered carefully and click Next to proceed with backup. Last chance to click Back and change something before the task commences. (screenshot)
Backup progress
Now the task is in the progress: no further input from you is necessary. You can switch over to other applications and let the wizard do its work in the background. You will be notified when the backup process is finished. Or just sit back and watch the progress bar move. The wizard provides you with the estimation of time remaining till completion. (screenshot)
Backup complete
The backup is complete. Now, for your convenience, the wizard can open Windows Explorer at the location where the backup file is stored (so you can, for example, easily proceed with copying it to removable media of your choice) and launch Outlook Express (so you can continue to work with it). (screenshot)