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| Thread ID: 78133 | 2007-04-04 09:00:00 | Interesting problem with Outlook 2000 pst file. | Billy T (70) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 538244 | 2007-04-04 09:00:00 | Hi Team Had an email glitch the other day and may have overreacted a bit . :blush: The story goes like this: Outlook froze (not responding) every time I tried to open my Inbox or Sent Items folders, so I followed previous practice, made a full backup of Outlook . pst on DVD (1 . 4GB), renamed the existing file, copied an original back across then ran a "Detect and Repair" cycle on Outlook several times because this had previously produced the goods . Sadly this time it didn't fix it, so I moved to plan B, and ran the inbox repair tool (scanpst . exe) . That reported no errors so I copied the file over to my laptop and the folders opened OK . Seems I had forgotten that sometimes Outlook can show "not responding" in Task Manager for extended periods of time while it sorts out internal arguments of some sort, then reverts to normal as if nothing had happened . And that's where the overreaction caught me . The problem cleared itself, but then when I copied the original file back and restarted Outlook, it asked if I wanted it to recreate my folders or some-such . I figured that this would revert me to a standard folder format instead of my customised version, and I couldn't find anything in the help files about this question so I said no, and it promptly reverted to said standard format and all my custom folders were gone . No problems I thought, it's a nuisance but it desn't take long to recreate them . Set up the folders again, do a search for the content, then drag the various message groups back over to their relevant folders . That worked for all sorts of stuff I don't really need, but a large proportion of the correspondence from an overseas client has gone awol . It does not appear in any search so I am assuming that the messages are hidden somewhere in the pst file but with no way of accessing them . So, arising out of this debacle are two key questions: 1) If I transfer a fresh copy of my original pst file back across and this time accept Outlook's offer to recreate folders, will it restore my custom settings? Has anybody ever chosen this option, and if so, what exactly does it do? 2) If that fails, is there a tool that can be downloaded, free or otherwise that will let me access all of the messages in an uncorrupted pst file and pull out the ones that I need? I still have a virgin copy of the original pst file on DVD . All suggestions welcome! Cheers Billy 8-{) :confused: |
Billy T (70) | ||
| 538245 | 2007-04-04 09:10:00 | What about recreating a new pst file and then importing from the old (maybe corrupt) pst file? This would keep all your extra folders etc you may have made. I had a client who had a similar problem the other day with Outlook 2003 and the above fixed it. |
CYaBro (73) | ||
| 538246 | 2007-04-04 09:13:00 | How hideous. People actually put up with this sort of stuff? Mozilla and Thunderbird have Mozbackup (http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/) for this sort of thing. So much easier........... |
pctek (84) | ||
| 538247 | 2007-04-04 10:20:00 | What about recreating a new pst file and then importing from the old (maybe corrupt) pst file? This would keep all your extra folders etc you may have made. I had a client who had a similar problem the other day with Outlook 2003 and the above fixed it. I don't think the old one is corrupt, scanpst says it is OK, and to be truthful I haven't been able to find out how to create an new (empty) pst file despite a diligent search of the Help files. I haven't yet tried importing again from the DVD either because I needed to work and the present situation is functional. However, it has dawned on me that I can experiment on my laptop because I don't use that for email at all. Unfortunately I have to go out of town tomorrow so I won't be able to experiment with this until Sunday. I feel reasonably confident that it is the loss of the folder structure that is the cause of the problem, so I hope I'm right. Just as well I have a backup copy of the file! Cheers Billy 8-{) |
Billy T (70) | ||
| 538248 | 2007-04-04 10:24:00 | support.microsoft.com | CYaBro (73) | ||
| 538249 | 2007-04-05 01:18:00 | You have a 1.4gb pst file?....OMG, outlook must have crawled when running, not surprised if it corrupted. | SolMiester (139) | ||
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