Audio transfer from headphone jack to mic jack...?

I have the Olympus VN-6000pc digital recorder. This model does not have a usb port for easy file transfers. I bought a 3.5mm audio cable to connect the headphone jack on the recorder to the microphone on my laptop. I am using Audicity software which is supposed to be the best freeware available for audio editing; however I receive a ton of noise after the file has been transferred. I have also tried playing the recording directly to the laptop mic and that is much more clear, but I am not satisfied with it as the sound is much clearer directly from the recorder itself. Plus any background noise will be included in the recording as the file is being recorded with just a mic. That is the reason I want to use a cable. Is there any settings that will reduce the background noise to give me the clearest possible recording on my laptop? Will changing the sample rate improve the clarity? Any other tricks I can try?