Locating and restoring Outlook pst files

[Kingfisher]

I recently upgraded my Mom's PC.

I backed up her entire hard drive to an external usb hard drive.

After building and installing windows I was going to start transferring files from the back-up.

And now my dilema. I am having trouble restoring her Outlook.

 

I followed microsoft's instructions from their support site:

 

To restore your mail, contacts and other data from a backup copy of an Outlook PST file:

 

Select File | Import and Export... from the menu in Outlook.

Select Import from another program or file.

Click Next.

Highlight Personal Folder File (PST).

Click Next again.

Now use the Browse button to select the backup copy of the PST file you want to recover from your backup location.

Make sure Replace duplicates with items imported is selected.

Click Next.

Finish the import process with Finish.

 

 

When I browse the backed up files I cannot locate any outlook folder, I even tried search and came up with nothing. Should I be looking elswhere for those files?

 

Is there any other ideas about how to get these .pst files?

[centy]

You have to export before you format. Do a search on the hard drive, there won't be any PST files unless you have exported before hand.

[colonel.sanders]

**DRIVE_LETTER**:Documents and Settings**USER_ID**Local SettingsApplication DataMicrosoftOutlook

 

You need to go in folder options in explorer and unhide hidden files. Just copy over everything from this folder to the similar location on your new system drive

[centy]

Oh... mah god.

[ollietwinam]

You have to export before you format. Do a search on the hard drive, there won't be any PST files unless you have exported before hand.

 

It auto backs up every so often (well, assuming you haven't turned it off) so there's a chance that there's one, even if he didn't make a back up himself

[centy]

I did the same things that this guy did when restoring my mums computer not long back, when I searched for an answer all I got was that you had to export first, there was no mention of auto backups. The drive has since been formatted. I suppose I could try an ntfs recovery program on it, but most of the email addresses have been replaced manually now anyway.

 

I wish I had this info at the time though.

[Kingfisher]

The problem is, there is no outlook folder, just microsoft and office and other files. Thanks for the help folks.

[OldMike]

I just did this last night.

On the old PC, go to Outlook/File/Import and Export, highlight Export to a file, NEXT, Highlight Personal Folder File (.pst), NEXT, Click "Include subfolders" and highlight Personal Folders, NEXT, Click Browse, the Outlook file in the body is the one you want to right click on and copy to a folder or send it to a CD drive to transfer to the new computer.

 

On the new computer: copy the file to My Documents, go to Outlook/File/Import and Export and highlight Import from another program or file, NEXT, Highlight Personal Folder File (.pst), NEXT, Browse to My Documents and click on the Outlook file, NEXT.

That should to it. It worked for me with Outlook 2003.

 

Good Luck,

Mike