I have two computers remote from each other. One is Win 7 and one is Vista but this doesn't seem to make any difference if they are both Windows Mail programs. When I change locations, I copy the Windows Mail files from Computer 1 to a flash drive and take it to Computer 2, and it doesn't seem to matter which Computer is 1 or 2. When I get to Computer 2, I go to the Windows Mail file and erase the contents (contents, not the entire sub file) of each sub file and copy the contents of that sub file name from the flash drive to the file in Computer 2 that I erased. Complicated but I found I have to do it that way because Windows Mail only recognizes the sub file names that it generated in that computer but it will recognize the transferred files from another Windows Mail computer that are copied into those file names.

Besides this being infinitely more time consuming and problematic that transferring Outlook Express between computers, my problem is that there ends up being multiple email message names for the same message but all but one of them will be empty with the message that this message cannot be found. My question is therefore, is there somewhere in the Windows Mail combination of files that remembers the headers of all the messages that it contained  after I erase the messages within the sub files? When I copy these files from another computer back and forth a couple of times, are all of the message headers still there from old erased messages but have no content because I erased only the content? If I can find that file and if it is structured in some sensible way,  can I delete that also and just copy that file from the Computer 1 files from the flash drive that I bring to Computer 2. As it is, the sub files become very large because they are full of null messages.

I know this is difficult to understand and it took me a long time to even figure this out but I will never understand why Microsoft didn't keep the same file structure as Outlook Express that allowed me to just copy and paste the entire set of mail files from one computer to another.