Hi,

I had my outlook at home configured on a microsoft exchange server linked
to my office. I have since left the company and cannot access their server
anymore. When I opened my outlook it asked me if I wanted to save my inbox,
contacts etc as an offline file and saved everything to a Outlook.OST file
instead of my current .pst file. Now I can no longer access the contacts in
the .ost file. I tried renaming the file to .pst but it tells me it is not a
personal folder format. Can anyone tell me what to do to be able to access
those old contacts?? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Deb

Probably not. An .OST file is just a way to look at your Exchange data when
you're offline. If you disconnect the .OST from the Exchange profile and
can't reconnect it, it's "orphaned". You can search the web for programs
that will convert an .OST file to a .PST file, but they tend to be very
expensive.

If you ever run into this issue again, make sure you export your Exchange
data to a .PST file before you lose your access to the Exchange profile. A
..PST file can be used in Outlook no matter whether you are connected to
Exchange or not.

--
Jocelyn Fiorello
MVP - Outlook

*** Messages sent to my e-mail address will NOT be answered -- please reply
only to the newsgroup to preserve the message thread. ***


"Deb" wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I had my outlook at home configured on a microsoft exchange server linked
> to my office. I have since left the company and cannot access their server
> anymore. When I opened my outlook it asked me if I wanted to save my inbox,
> contacts etc as an offline file and saved everything to a Outlook.OST file
> instead of my current .pst file. Now I can no longer access the contacts in
> the .ost file. I tried renaming the file to .pst but it tells me it is not a
> personal folder format. Can anyone tell me what to do to be able to access
> those old contacts?? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Thank you,
> Deb