Still have no idea where the stuff's being kept on the old box.

Look under c:\\windows\\application data\\identities<insert gibberish string here>\\outlook express... you'll find a big pile of .dbx files in there.

Binary obfuscated data formats suck.

Considering that they're probably good ol' foxpro, I bet you can find a plethora of tools around you could use to mess with 'em. I don't particularly mind binary files, just so long as the tools exist to access them directly if you need to. The problem, of course, is that this is not often the case at hand. I'd be surprised if decent db recovery/alteration tools for the outlook databases shipped with MS Office... and even more surprised if the docs on how to use anything that might be able to go look at those were easily found.

It's the steep decline in the quality of the documentation that ships with most software that I hold the software industry as a whole mostly to task for, more than anything else. When I dig out the old manuals for the stuff I got back in the day ('92 to '95 or so) and what you get nowadays, I'm pretty much convinced that they're all carpetbaggers out to make the quick buck and get out rather than actually earning an honest crust by delivering quality goods to their clientele.