Outlook 2000 .pst file information needed.

[skygoth]

I recently formatted my harddrive and reinstalled Windows. Just like every OTHER time I did this, I backed up all my files, including my outlook.pst file, so I could keep my email (and favorites and other things I backed up, but they aren't important right now) -- but for the first time ever, something strange happened. When I opened up the file, which is 60 megs (I recently cleaned it out from the 140 it was before), it acted like there was no email in it. Now, it's not claiming to be corrupt, or anything, but it appears as though the table of contents has been screwed up.

Is there any way to extract the email from the file? Given that it's 60 megs, I can only assume that the information is all still there, but I have no knowledge as to how to retrieve it. If it takes effort and time ,that's fine. I would be very happy to get that email back. (I think I'll also take to backing up the file periodically now, as I do other important files )

Thanks for any help.

--Nathan

 

[RickSpr]

Rather than that you have a screwed up index, it's more likely that Outlook is displaying the contents of a different, empty .pst file. The first time you open Outlook after installing it, it will look for Outlook.pst in the default folder (I don't remember where that is, but it might be your Application Data folder in your profile). If it doesn't find it, it will create it.

Try this: On the File menu, select Open>Personal Folders File, then navigate to your file and open it. If I'm right, this will show an additional folder tree in the Folders pane, and your mail (and contacts, tasks, etc.) will be in there.

Rick Sprague

 

[skygoth]

I was actually already speaking of the Open->Personal Folders File, where the additional tree opens up. The additional tree is empty when I open up the old backed up pst file.

As added information, I looked into it some more, the 52 megabyte .pst file that I backed up has email in it (if I load it up in a text editor I can see bits of it), but it appears to be on the "medium" encryption setting for Outlook 2000, which means I can't write any basica little program to go through and deal with the problem.

But even though the email is there, it still doesn't show up when I open the file. So, I'm still very confused. I've tried opening it (with the open->personal folders file option) on 3 different machines, an XP, a 2000, and a 98se. None worked. Admittedly, I was last using ME, so maybe I need to try on an ME, but I don't know anyone who runs ME, sadly. And that seems very unlikely to me.

Any more help would be great. Just updating people on the situation.

 

[Guest_imported]

I currently have the same problem - I reinstalled windows and then Outlook didn't like the .pst files I had backed up. Intially I had to run the Inbox repair tool on some of the .pst as Outlook decided they were corrupt - but out of my mailboxes and contact lists Outlook has only managed to restore 2 contacts. Any help would be appreciated by me as well!

 

[seabird]

Have you tried running scanpst on it? That is the inbox repair tool utility (I think!).

Of course back the thing up before taking my advice!

C

 

[CaptainD]

Have you tried "File" "Import" and import from that *.pst file to the new one Outlook created when you installed it. I would think that would build the index etc.

 

[skygoth]

My .pst file is not corrupt, it opens perfectly well. (I had a corrupt one over a year ago, that was a different problem though ) --
I'll try scanpst, if I can find it.

As for "file" "import" -- outlook 2000 doesn't import outlook files. It opens them. It imports from OTHER file systems.