Ray19 said:
I'm not sure but i think my Outlook 2002, at one time offered to
create a backup file;
Nope. Not by itself it didn't.
or, more likely, I found a procedure that told
me how to create a backup file for my Outlook 2002 which I followed.
Anyhow, I beleive the .BAK file I have is a result of backing up my
Outllook 2002? Does that sound plausible?
It sounds plausible, but you still had to use some tool to create the file.
I found the following article from the Knowledge Base -
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/287497
This article has nothing to do with backing up Outlook data. It has to do
with repairing a damaged PST. While it's true that the Inbox Repair Tool
(SCANPST) creates a .BAK copy of the PST, that BAK file will be a DAMAGED
PST (or you wouldn't be processing it with SCANPST).
At the end of this article they talk about the .bak file "How to
recover items from the Backup Personal Folders (.pst) file". Do you
think I should follow the procedure they outline and change my .bak
file to .pst. I guess I'm wondering if I could do more harm than
good? What is your advice?
You could try that, if you wish, but if the file wasn't a PST to start with,
renaming its extension to .PST won't change the fact that Outlook won't be
able to use it. There are other backup tools that create .BAK files and
you'd have to restore it to its original form by using the tool that created
it in the first place. In fact, you can simply rename any file to .BAK.
Suppose you had renamed a Word document named "outlook.doc" to outlook.bak
and then forgot you had done that. Because you might rename it to
outlook.pst won't mean Outlook will be able to understand it.
