Mark Romney wrote:

my wifes pc crashed (mother board went bad) ( and yes I backed up her
work files a week ago) so I bought a new pc for her and was able to
slavage the old hard drive and now have it as a usb exteranl hard
drive and want to import her sent e-mails and any newly created
contacts in the last week from this drive, but I can not figure out
how to export it from the new exteranl drive.

There's no reason to export or import and you should avoid it.

I know how to create an
export from outlook, but the only outlook I can launch appears to be
the one on the new computer. Is there a way to launch outlook from
the usb drive or copy a certain folder?

You can't launch Outlook from a drive brought from another PC. You can,
however, use some of its data files. See if this helps:
http://www.howto-outlook.com/howto/backupandrestore.htm
http://www.slipstick.com/config/backup.htm
--
Brian Tillman