Duplicate Personal Folders.

[Mathew Rizzal]

G'day. In Outlook 2003, I now have Two Personal Folders and cannot get rid
of one of them. They are identical in terms of content and tree structure.

Why/how did this happen?

Thanks.

 

[Brian Tillman]

G'day. In Outlook 2003, I now have Two Personal Folders and cannot
get rid of one of them. They are identical in terms of content and
tree structure.
Why/how did this happen?

Often caused by importing from a PST. Your mail profile is corrupt. You
need to create a new one.

 

[Christian Goeller]

Mathew Rizzal, you wrote on Fri, 25 Jan 2008 09:19:07 -0700:

G'day. In Outlook 2003, I now have Two Personal Folders and cannot get rid
of one of them. They are identical in terms of content and tree structure.

Your profile is damaged. Using [1] should help you to get rid of the
ghost folder. If not you have to create a new profile.

[1] http://www.olfolders.de/Lang/English/OLfix/index.htm

--
Best Regards
Christian Goeller

MVP - MS Outlook
http://www.outlookfaq.net

 

[Mathew Rizzal]

Thanks Christian and Brian. Nothing worked, so I created a new profile.

Much thanks tho.

Cheers.

Mathew Rizzal, you wrote on Fri, 25 Jan 2008 09:19:07 -0700:

G'day. In Outlook 2003, I now have Two Personal Folders and cannot get
rid
of one of them. They are identical in terms of content and tree
structure.

Your profile is damaged. Using [1] should help you to get rid of the
ghost folder. If not you have to create a new profile.

[1] http://www.olfolders.de/Lang/English/OLfix/index.htm

--
Best Regards
Christian Goeller

MVP - MS Outlook
http://www.outlookfaq.net

 

[Tom von Alten]

Often caused by importing from a PST. Your mail profile is corrupt. You
need to create a new one.

Yes, well, maybe. After reinstalling WinXP, Office, and (some of) the rest
of what makes this machine useful (thanks to Visual Studio 2008's
installation fubaring it, but that's another long and ugly story), I
started/installed Outlook, skipped through the initial account setup, exited,
and then clobbered the .pst with my backed up copy.

I guess I'm not supposed to do that.

Nevertheless, in spite of two folder trees, mail delivery, receiving, and
sorting, is working as directed.

I have MOSTLY recreated the useful part of my profile manually -- server
connection information, customize/options configuration, signatures, rules...
and was fairly annoyed to have to do all of that by hand.

Now that I've tried it the wrong way one time, can you tell me what the
RIGHT way is to restore a fully backed-up set of data and configuration? Or
is it the case that the design is defective and the only way forward is to
manually re-create a large number of things that weren't seen fit for
inclusion in the .pst?

 

[Brian Tillman]

Yes, well, maybe. After reinstalling WinXP, Office, and (some of) the
rest of what makes this machine useful (thanks to Visual Studio 2008's
installation fubaring it, but that's another long and ugly story), I
started/installed Outlook, skipped through the initial account setup,
exited, and then clobbered the .pst with my backed up copy.

I guess I'm not supposed to do that.

Correct. That is likely to corrupt the mail profile. You should never
overwrite one PST with another.

Now that I've tried it the wrong way one time, can you tell me what
the RIGHT way is to restore a fully backed-up set of data and
configuration?

With Outlook 2003, you can use the Microsoft Office Save My Settings Wizard
to save most of your mail profile settings and restore them (other versions
of Office don't have that tool). When you configure your mail profile, use
the Mail applet in Control Panel to add the PST you wish to use for your
delivery location (with the Data Files button), use the E-mail Accounts
button to make it your delivery location (and add your accounts), then use
the Data Files button again to remove any extraneous PST. This is all done
without running Outlook.

 

[Tom von Alten]

With Outlook 2003, you can use the Microsoft Office Save My Settings Wizard
to save most of your mail profile settings and restore them (other versions
of Office don't have that tool).

Having NOT done that before wiping my XP system clean and reinstalling
everything, is there a way to recover what I had, from the full system backup
(including "save state") before the purge?

Thanks.

 

[Tom von Alten]

This is some fascinating stuff.

...When you configure your mail profile, use
the Mail applet in Control Panel to add the PST you wish to use for your
delivery location (with the Data Files button), use the E-mail Accounts
button to make it your delivery location (and add your accounts), then use
the Data Files button again to remove any extraneous PST. This is all done
without running Outlook....

Ok, I used the Wizard to save my current settings. I then wired in a NEW
data file and said to use it for the delivery destination. Restarting Outlook,
I see the new .pst folder, and the two instances of the old one. I close
one. I go to close the other, no can do "object not found."

Close, go back to the control panel Mail business, and change the delivery
destination back to the old file. Restart Outlook. Now I can close the dummy
new one, and I've got one instance of my one .pst file, and I haven't
clobbered
all my customization.

Except... Mail Setup Data Files now shows an empty list.

That my actions "corrupted" the mail profile in a way that cannot be
undone is fairly astounding.

Let's talk about the way this SHOULD work, shall we? One of my other
critical applications was Quicken, with tens of MB of data generated over
the last 16 years or so. I backed up the set of data files (4 of them),
reinstalled the O/S, restored the data files, reinstalled the application,
opened the data files on startup (after it found them for me).

I started using Outlook when it was Outlook 95. It's amazing to me that
I've stuck with it this long. This is seriously defective.

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

Nothing astounding at all. Nothing new at all. (There was no Outlook 95).
It has always been necessary that you create a new Outlook profile when you
change versions and that you use a supported method to migrate your data
file. You have yet to do that.

 

[Tom von Alten]

Nothing astounding at all. Nothing new at all. (There was no Outlook 95).

Pardon me. Outlook97, on Windows95.

It has always been necessary that you create a new Outlook profile when you
change versions and that you use a supported method to migrate your data
file. You have yet to do that.

Blaming the victim? That's a little bizarre.

I did not "change versions." I reinstalled WinXP, and reinstalled the SAME
version of Outlook, and tried to reconnect to my data, but I failed to
anticipate
the fragmentation of configuration or this

Having done all that, and discovering that my bad acts have "corrupted the
mail profile," I'm now trying to rectify the situation without losing data,
or having to repeat work that I just had to repeat once already to get my
user interface back the way it was.

I asked for help, and was told what I *should* have done. Bummer. Didn't.
Now what? I tried to follow Brian Tillman's instructions, and reported back
what happened in some detail.

This "corrupt mail profile" persists, and I'm wondering what I should be
reinstalling next.

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

The correct way to migrate Outlook data to another installation is the same
whether you change versions or not. Brian answered your question already. I
would suggest following his directions.

 

[Tom von Alten]

The correct way to migrate Outlook data to another installation is the same
whether you change versions or not. Brian answered your question already. I
would suggest following his directions.

Russ, you're not adding value here. As I said previously (and as you quoted
in full for some reason), I did attempt to follow Brian's directions,
reported the result.

Another colleague of mine with ample experience in the ways of Microsoft
wrote me and said "I've done it exactly the way you did it at least three
times. I've seen the two inboxes but one of them disappeared at some point,
honestly don't remember if it was because of something I did."

Just to be crystal clear, Brian's instructions were to use the Mail applet
in Control Panel, and
1) Add the PST you wish to use for your delivery location (with the Data
Files button),
2) Set the delivery location with the E-mail Accounts button, make it your
delivery location (and add your accounts),
3) remove any extraneous PST with the Data Files button,
(all done without running Outlook).

I imagine if I were starting from scratch, that would be the ticket, but I'm
not starting from scratch, and the process described simply does not work to
eliminate the duplicate folder tree icon.

I can BREAK the icon by removing the file (not simply removing the pointer
with Control Panel / Mail / Data Files), but that doesn't make it go away.
It's still there, and throws an error for "Properties" or "Close."

Putting the "real" outlook.pst back in place and connecting it up with the
Mail applet gives me a functional app, albeit with the "corruption" problem
that is manifested as a UI defect I can overlook. Time to get back to
productive work.

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

I think you misread Brian's instructions and ignored mine. Once you have
corrupted your Outlook profile, you must first create a new one and then use
the method he described or others we have posted to migrate your data
correctly. This is all information we post here almost every day. If you
need more information, please look at these sites.
New profile creation:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;829918&Product=out2003

Data migration:
http://www.slipstick.com/config/backup.htm
http://www.howto-outlook.com/Howto/backupandrestore.htm
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA010771141033.aspx

 

[Tom von Alten]

I think you misread Brian's instructions and ignored mine.

I did misinterpret Brian's instructions, in part because I didn't recognize
"Mail Profile" as the term of art you all are so familiar with. To me, there
was Outlook *data*, and its configuration, and the fragmented user interface
for the latter does not make the stepwise sequence and dependencies clear.

That's why there are so many articles and discussions on this topic, and why
you have to post the same information "almost every day."

Using "Outlook profile" and "Mail profile" synonymously confused matters
further, and your scolding was a distraction.

Russ, I'm a mechanical engineer, and a programmer; I'm used to following
instructions carefully, writing procedures in code and plain english,
designing user interfaces. Like all humans, I make mistakes, and I make MORE
mistakes when using poorly designed user interfaces.

Your familiarity with the information should lead you to greater clarity in
instruction, rather than being rude to users who stumble in here with a
problem that's brand new to them.

THIS, finally, was useful to me:

New profile creation:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;829918&Product=out2003

Thank you for that reference. I was able to fix the problem with this last
post from you and that instruction.

P.S. As a regular contributor to these discussion forums, your posts would
be improved if you quoted previous messages only as needed for clarity; the
previous message is in the thread, and quoting it in its entirety only adds
noise.

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

Appreciate the criticism. It is impossible for us to know that a user has
failed to understand instructions when we have to read between the lines of
their posts to figure out what they have done wrong. Clearer questions will
result in clearer answers. We usually assume that users who have been using
Outlook for 10 years have familiarity with the terms involved, but we're
happy to backtrack with more basic information when it turns out it is
needed. When someone jumps in on a very old thread, it is customary to
include the post with replies because it is often hard to follow old threads
that have been joined by several people when the original posts are no
longer on the server.
I completely agree that the proper procedure for migrating Outlook data from
one installation to another is one of the most counterintuitive processes
imaginable. It always has been. I am amazed you have not run into this issue
before now. The bad news is that is gets worse with each successive version.