HELP: SP3 won't read .pst

[John Sphar]

After web-updating Office 2002 to SP3, Office no longer
has my personal settings (contacts, e-mail addresses and
folders, etc.). After searching I found my very large
outlook.pst and a few others (corresponding to my kids'
usernames) in the <c:\documents and
settings\username\local settings\application
data\microsoft\outlook subdirectory>.

How do I get the new SP3 to read them?

Incidentally, the "search" provided all the info except
the filename extension .pst. wierd.

Thanks in advance for any help offered.

John S.
San Jose

 

[Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]]

Open Outlook - then use File->Open Outlook Data File. Navigate to the
location you just identified and open the file.

--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. Due to
the (insert latest virus name here) virus, all mail sent to my personal
account will be deleted without reading.

After searching google.groups.com and finding no answer, John Sphar asked:

| After web-updating Office 2002 to SP3, Office no longer
| has my personal settings (contacts, e-mail addresses and
| folders, etc.). After searching I found my very large
| outlook.pst and a few others (corresponding to my kids'
| usernames) in the <c:\documents and
| settings\username\local settings\application
| data\microsoft\outlook subdirectory>.
|
| How do I get the new SP3 to read them?
|
| Incidentally, the "search" provided all the info except
| the filename extension .pst. wierd.
|
| Thanks in advance for any help offered.
|
| John S.
| San Jose

 

[John Sphar]

Millie, thanks for the help. Please stay with me on this,
because it's wierd. I still can't load the pst file. Two
things are wierd:

first I search for any file with "outlook" as part of the
filename on drive c:. I find what appears to be my
outlook data file, 170KB in size. But it is in a
directory that doesn't exist namely. ...\Documents and
Settings\John H. Sphar\Local Settings\Application
Data\Microsoft\Outlook. This is all as I said before.
Using "My Computer" file manager tool to drill down the
subdirectories, there is no \Local Settings\ folder
under ...\John H. Sphar\ even though search says there
is. That may or may not be important.

second: even if I copy my 170KB outlook data file to a
good place like desktop for instance, open Outlook, click
file, outlook data file, and doubleclick my newly copied
data file to load it, Outlook loads something, but there
is no customized data once it does. It's blank - all new
with no change. For all users, when I load Outlook, it
thinks it is a new installation (understandable, because I
did just update to SP3), but without asking, it creates a
new blank datafile for each user.

So I'm back where I started with a blank data file, but
the apparently good 170KB one still on my disk. How can I
look at this file to see if it is 170KB of nothing, or if
it is still my old Outlook data file? Then assuming it is
good, how do I get it to load?

Thanks for reading all this.

John Sphar

 

[John Sphar]

hey Millie - you can ignore my reply to your last message
posted yesterday: I was able to fix most of it....

-----Original Message-----
Open Outlook - then use File->Open Outlook Data File. Navigate to the
location you just identified and open the file.

The above advice (file/open/outlook data file, didn't work.
I had updated to Office 2002 SP3 from a very early version
(prior to SP2, and maybe the initial release...). The
above did not work for some reason. But I got import to
work, pointing to the aforementioned pst file. It got me
back my e-mails and folders, calendar; but my e-mail
account info is missing. Hoping I do not have to recreate
everything from scratch, do you know how I can do it?
Thanks in advance,

John Sphar
San Jose