Problem with Outlook 2003 Address Book after Detect and Repair

[Larry]

A week ago I did a Detect and Repair in Outlook 2003, and checked the box
"Discard my customized settings and restore default settings." I lost my
emails and contacts as a result. I have been sending and receiving emails
for the past week, since the Detect and Repair.



Today I did a search on my problem of lost emails and contacts in Google
Groups and learned about PST files. Clicking on File/Data File Management
showed me that outlook1.pst was in use. I found another file in the Outlook
folder named outlook.pst. I changed the names of the two files so that
outlook.pst became outlook1.pst.



My old emails were now back. Next I clicked the Contacts button and found
that my old contacts were also back. The old emails are of limited
importance, but I was very happy to have the contacts back. Next I entered
the email editor and clicked on the Address Book icon, where I got following
message, "The address list could not be displayed. The Contacts folder
associated with this address list could not be opened; it may have been
moved or deleted, or you do not have permissions."



So I have the contacts, but the address book to access them cannot be opened
in the email editor.

1. How do I fix it so I can access the names in the address book?

2. Is there a way to merge the two PST files so that I have everything
from both before and after the Detect and Repair?

3. Did I lose my data because of checking that box (Discard my
customized settings and restore default settings)? Or does that just
automatically happen when you do a Detect and Repair?



Thanks for your help,



Larry

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

Not sure what you thought you were doing, but simply renaming Outlook data
files is never wise, recommended, or supported. There are ample Help files
and KB articles that document how to transfer Outlook data. Feel free to
avail yourself of that informtion.
If you are lucky, all you need to do at this point is reconfigure your
Outlook Address Book view so that it can connect to your current data file.
There is ample information on how to do that as well:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;287563&Product=ol2002