Outlook reinstalls automatically, contacts and emails lost, no res

[Koen Van den Brande]

Major setback.
My Outlook chose to reinstall automatically due to 'missing registry keys'
In the process it seems to have deleted about 2500 contacts and several
years of email history.
I faithfully backup My Documents but did not know how to backup Oulook data.
I tried to use the restore function but there appears to have been no
restore point created by the re-install.
Is there any way to recover the emails and contacts ?
For future reference - how do I make backups of Outlook data ?

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

Reinstalling never removes data. It probably just created a new profile with
a new data file. Your old one is still there.
The file you need is your Personal Folders file (*.pst) It's where all the
mail, calendar, contacts etc are stored.

Take a look at these pages for info on Outlook data backup or transfer:
http://www.slipstick.com/config/backup.htm
http://www.howto-outlook.com/Howto/backupandrestore.htm
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA010771141033.aspx

 

[BillR [MVP]]

Outlook stores all its data in a (possibly hidden) file with a .PST
extension. often this is called outlook.PST. Search for it and you can open
it from within Outlook and copy items to your current installation.

 

[Koen Van den Brande]

Bill,

Thanks. What a relief.
I am so pleased that whoever designed this decided to avod overwriting the
old data.
I found an Outlook.pst and an Outlook1.pst.
The second one is the one that is now being opened as the default.
The other one contains all my emails ... phew

This is the first time I have used a forum to ask a question and to get a
response back from two experts immediately was a great experience.

Thanks also to Russ for his - similar - response.

I will check out the backup information.

One last question .. can I now change back to using my old Outlook.pst
automatically ?

Regards,

Koen

PS - The notify message email which arrived had a link back which did not
work. How do I report this sort of problem ?

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

Method to migrate to a previous PST depends on your version, which you did
not mention. It is included in the links I posted.