Move outlook mail from windows XP to windows 7 and Outlook 2010

You don't move the file, you import your old .pst file into Outlook 2010.

Backup the pst file along with any other data you want as there is no in place upgrade from XP to win 7. After a clean install of win 7, copy the pst file onto a local hard drive and have outlook 2010 import the pst file as Grumpy9117 said.

Thanks, Grumpy. Please see comment to the other response.

Yes, so I copy the archive.pst, archive1.pst, outlook.pst and outlook1.pst to a portable drive (from the Linux machine that has my old drive in it). Then I take the portable drive to my new portable Windows 7 machine and then try importing 1st the outlook1.pst into Outlook.

If I'm not happy, I'll next try importing the archive1.pst to see if that is good, right? (Then if no good, the outlook and last the archive pst files which are both very old.) Am I good so far?

And, do these files contain not only my email messages, but also my contacts list?

The pst file is just mail, not contacts. You can import those seperately I believe. The outlook.pst should be your mail. The archives and outlook1 are either older pst files or the pst file may have reached it's max size and outlook created a new pst file.

Wrong! All Outlook information is stored in the Outlook.pst file including mail, contacts, calendar & tasks.