I have backed up data from a computer running Office 2003 that I am trying to
open on a computer running office 2002. It does not appear to be backwardly
compatible. Any suggestions?

berniedoug wrote:

> I have backed up data from a computer running Office 2003 that I am trying to
> open on a computer running office 2002. It does not appear to be backwardly
> compatible. Any suggestions?

Outlook 2002, and earlier, used ANSI .pst database files for the message
store. Outlook 2003, and later, support ANSI .pst files but added
support for Unicode .pst files which upped the maximum size for the
database file. ANSI .pst files are limited to 2GB (1.87GiB) in size
while Unicode .pst files can be up to something like 2 or 4TB in size
(but default to 20GB to keep reindexing quick so you aren't waiting a
long time to load the .pst file or update it).

So you probably created a Unicode .pst file in Outlook 2003 to get
around the 2GB size limitation. That means the Unicode .pst file
created by Outlook 2003 cannot be read by prior versions since they
don't support Unicode database format.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/830336
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/829971
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/839109

There are two types of PST files, 97-2002, and the Unicode type that was
introduced with Outlook 2003.

With Outlook 2003/2007 you can use both types, but with earlier versions
you can only use the 97-2002 type.

To make your data accessible by Outlook 2002, you must create a 97-2002
type PST under Outlook 2003, then move all data (drag-and-drop) from
your Unicode PST file to the 97-2002 type PST file.

berniedoug wrote:
> I have backed up data from a computer running Office 2003 that I am trying to
> open on a computer running office 2002. It does not appear to be backwardly
> compatible. Any suggestions?