Outlook Help

Good moring all,

I have a problem. Client computer running Windows 98 running MS Outlook (the full program, not outlook express). Computer crashed and now all the old e-mails, address book and other things are lost. E-mail accounts are still set up and functioning properly. Can still send/recieve e-mails with no problems. Just all the prevous stuff is totally gone. Did a search for .pst files, and the file is still in c:\my documents, and it's the proper size (130+mb). My question is how do I go about pointing Outlook back to this file as this entire situation looks to me as if Outlook is just looking in the wrong area for it's files, and I think that if I could point it back to the proper place it would be all fixed no problem.

Any/all help would be appreciated.

Cheers

 

I can't give you specifics since I run a different version but there should be a place to set where Outlook looks for that file.

It's in tools~options~mail setup on my version but probably different on that one.

If no luck that way you may be able to run an import and point it to the existing .pst file as the source to import from.

 

Tap-Out

As Newt said, Depending on the version of Outlook this may be different or easier. But this is what I used to do with Outlook 97. I did it a couple of times in Outlook 2000 as well.

Try this. Search for *.pst again. You should find another .pst file buried in C:\program files\microsoft office......somewhere. Make a copy of that .pst and put it on your desktop.

Now go to the program files directory where you found the .pst and delete it. The next time you run Outlook it will tell you it can't open the .pst file and ask you for a new location to store messages. You can then browse and point to your .pst file in C:\Mydocuments. This should give you all the folders etc that you had before the crash.

Now find the .pst file you saved on the desktop and use the Outlook Import/Export feature to import the contents of that .pst back into Outlook.

File>Import/Export>Import from another program or file..choose personal folder file (.pst)

This will add any mail you received before you changed the location of your message storage. Once the mail is succesfully imported you can delete the .pst on your desktop.

Don't know if this works with Office XP or 2003 but I used to do it with 2000 and 97. And Newt's suggestion looks a lot easier if you have Office XP or 2003.

Cheers,
ICE

 

Good suggestions ICE but I'm betting from the results he already has (restored a tiny, tiny fraction of what was there) that the .pst file has wobbled and crashed. If so, recovery of any of the contents using a 'normal' method is very iffy.

If your idea works then it is certainly the easiest and safest. If the .pst file isn't blown, your idea will probably work.

 

Personally, I'd vote for Newt's suggestion of using "Import" to pull the old e-mails into the new system. That way the old PST file is left intact and the old e-mail are brought into a working new PST data file.

 

In most OL you can "OPEN" a PST file from the file menu. Just Open it.
If you want to use it as the default, you can go
Tools->account
you will find a default location dropdown menu there. Change it and restart OL.
You may can not find the option if you are using older versions like 97,98 or 2000. Go support.microsoft.com to check out how to change default email location. I cannot remember amymore, sorry.

 

I once deleted my e-mail (don't ask how) and got it all back with a program called DBXtend. Don't know if it still exists. It was available through some kind of Outlook help site. It saved my life.