Recover Outlook E-Mails

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Can anyone help me recover my outllok e-mails and contacts? There should be archives right?
 
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Ian

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Welcome to the forums Daniel :)

You'll need to explain a little more about your situation. Which verison of Outlook is this, how did you lose the files in the first place etc... I'm sure we'll be able to give some good advice :D
 
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Thanks, Ian, for responding. Since my last OS install 3yrs ago, I have prepared for this day. I installed a 350 GB internal (F) local drive and saved everything on the F drive. I loaded XP on the 16 GB (C:) drive knowing that one day I will lose the C drive again. Hopefully my email archives are somewhere on the F drive. Before loading Win 7 I copied C to a folder on F labeled "My old C". I forgot to export my address book out of outlook 2003.
When I tried to load win 7 on C; there was not enough free space. Win 7 needs 16 GB of disc space to load. Easy fix "format c" . . .
After which, I loaded win 7 on C. a clean install with exceptions. No driver for "NTativrv" , and no driver for "multimedia video controller" after troubleshooting. I'll get to those issues latter when the problem reveals.
Back to Outlook - auto archives was turned on so, can I retrieve email and/or address book(contacts) from F?
 
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Back to Outlook - auto archives was turned on so, can I retrieve email and/or address book(contacts) from F?
Yes as posted before - do a search of your F drive

*.pab files are Microsoft Outlook address book files.
*.pst files are Microsoft Outlook mail files.
*.wab files are Windows Address book filescould be in a folder \Documents and Settings\User\Application Data\Microsoft\ unless you create a custom folder ?

Open Outlook and use the import address book option to copy the old address book
Not sure if you can do the same for mail, but if you have the old files copy them into the new mail folder or update where you want to store the mail in Outlook options.

also see the Outlook Help file for more details
 
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I went looking for .wab files, .pst files ,and .pab within my "old C" folder and yes there are a list of file names with the letters wab, pst. pab somewhere in the name of that file I’ve determined that the one labeled address book was the one to open (I think). There were no contacts (?) (Perhaps it was the old express address book?) I don't know which one to open and with which program to open with. I tried to open it with note pad. =scripts, I tried to open with outlook; the file attached as an email attachment.

If only I knew which file to import into Outlook. I was looking for a file with an extension .PST. No such luck. I found PST8PDT the latest date3/14/2009 and the largest file 2.23KB. When I click what program to open with? Outlook is not listed. I can browse and find outlook and open with it.

I will take your advice and ask outlook help, “ where are my archive files?’

Thanks for your attention.
 
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The easiest and quickest way I know of is to open the "tree view" of your folders
Each top level item, normally called "Personal Folders", or "Outlook Today", represents a separate PST. Right click on it and then select Properties
Now click on the Advanced button
And there, right in the middle of everything, is the Filename and the full path to the PST.
 
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Did you archive your address book? Auto archive usually just saves the messages.
A pity you didn't come here earlier as the suggestion would have been to use windows easy file transfer which saves everything - files, account settings, the lot and just puts it back onto Win 7.
However if you know where the files are then you need to IMPORT them into outlook from outlook. Just opening the file from explorer won't show anything.
 
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Conclusion

Thanks for all replys . I'm thinking I lost it.

When XP stated giving me trouble I probly cleaned up my files to save space. I think it asked if I wanted to delete my archived files. That was my mistake, after disk cleanup and defraging the sysem was still unstable.

So, lets jump onboard and try 7.

Has been very stable untill today, Windows media player is dragging. And my ATI X800 is not suported. All I can find are ATI archives of vista. bummer.

Thanks again, out
 

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