Recovering contacts deleted offline

[gregl]

I have inadvertently deleted most of my contact when working in Outlook 2003
in offline mode. They have been emptied from the "deleted" folder as well. I
do not have a .pst file.
I assume that when I reconnect to the Exchange Server on my office LAN, the
synchronisation process will automatically remove those contacts from the
server version of my account as well.
How can I recover these contacts from the server version?
Can I delete the .ost file to trick the synchronisation process into
thinking this is a new pc, thus repopulating my offline files - email,
calendar as well as contacts?

 

[gregl]

A clarification:
I want to use the existing contacts on the server to restore the ones I
deleted offline. I don't want to lose the ones on the server, as I access
them daily via OWA.

 

[Brian Tillman]

A clarification:
I want to use the existing contacts on the server to restore the ones
I deleted offline. I don't want to lose the ones on the server, as I
access them daily via OWA.

If your Exchange admin has enabled deleted items retention, you should be
able to use Tools>Recover Deleted Items while viewing the Deleted Items
folder after synching. In addition, you can also connect to OWA, create a
new contacts-holding folder, copy the items that will delete when you sync
to the new folder, connect Outlook and let it sync, then move the items from
the second folder back to the default folder.