"Couble" Personal Folders

[Stephen Porter]

Hi,

I recently wanted to import JUST the contacts from one
person's Outlook.pst file into another's. I used the
"Import/Export" wizard and had some problems trying to
work properly. When I would navigate to the .PST final
it asked for as the source of the imports and chose that
and then chose the "Contacts" folder of the current file I
just got a message saying you couldn't merge from/to the
same file. I had definitely specified a .PST file as the
source that was NOT the same as the file I had open.

I eventually was able to somehow get it to do the import,
but now there are TWO different "sets" of Personal Folders
in the Folder View. They seem to be identical--they both
have the Contacts that were imported and all the same
folders, emails, etc., etc.

I cannot seem to get rid of the two references to what
must be the same .PST file.

This is probably not a big deal, but I would like to know
what I'm doing wrong and would like to clean up the
display to show just one set of Personal Folders.

TIA.

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

There is never any reason to use Import with a PST file--too many chances
for errors or data corruption.
If you want the information from another PST file in your current one,
simply open the other PST file and copy the information you need. (File >
Open > Outlook Data File)

 

[Stephen Porter]

Hi Russ,

Thanks for this info and the related followup to my other
question about how to properly hook up a new .PST file.
See my follow-up question to that on that thread.

Best regards,
Stephen Porter

There is never any reason to use Import with a PST file--too many chances
for errors or data corruption.
If you want the information from another PST file in your current one,
simply open the other PST file and copy the information you need. (File >
Open > Outlook Data File)

--

 

[Stephen Porter]

Hi again Russ,

I revisted the scene of the crime and there are *3* sets
of Personal Folders. I followed your instructions on
creating a new profile and then changing the folder/file
where mail is delivered and now there is only one active
set of Personal Folders. However, my previous tinkering
seems to have screwed up the ability to "close" the old,
unwanted sets. When I try it I get an error saying
"Object not available."

Is there a way to fix this error? Just un-install
Outlook completely and start afresh?

TIA.

Stephen Porter

There is never any reason to use Import with a PST file--too many chances
for errors or data corruption.
If you want the information from another PST file in your current one,
simply open the other PST file and copy the information you need. (File >
Open > Outlook Data File)

--

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

It doesn't sound like you actually created a new profile from scratch. If
you had, the references to the other PST files would not have been there.
You can remove the reference to the other PST files by editing the registry:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows
Messaging Subsystem\Profiles\Outlook

Within the Outlook folder, there are a bunch of folders with long
hexadecimal values for names -- those are the ones you need to look in to
see if you can find the ghost .PST names. If you delete one of the keys and
it points to your real .PST file instead of one of the ghosts, it's not the
end of the world -- your data won't be gone. The worst you would have to do
is recreate your Outlook profile.