I clicked the wrong thing in MDBVU32.EXE and deleted everything

[jossie.jacobs]

I was following the instructions on a help page to delete stuck Read
Receipts in my outbox and I clicked the wrong thing - I think it was
lpFld -< deletefolder - and deleted everything. I have a backup of
outlook.pst and archive.pst but restoring them to their proper
location isn't helping. When I open Outlook it says UNABLE TO OPEN
YOUR OUTLOOK FOLDERS. THE OPERATION CANNOT BE COMPLETED BECAUSE THE
OBJECT HAS BEEN DELETED.

Can anyone help me fix my screw-up?

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

You did what now? What instructions were you following and what exactly did
you do?
You never restore Outlook data by just copying files to a location. That
only corrupts your profile. You restore data by opening the file in Outlook
and setting that file as the default for the profile.

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

So your Outbox was deleted?

Try opening the Start, Run dialog and in that dialog typing the following,
making sure that there's a space before the switch:

outlook.exe /resetfolders

That should cause Outlook to create a new default Outbox folder. See if that
helps.

As you've no doubt learned, be very careful when using a low level tool such
as a MAPI viewer, you can do all sorts of damage if you're not careful or
don't know what you're doing.