How shall I get access to mails I have placed on the correspondence file

[Bjørn Simonsen]

2007.03.05,10:10 EUST
Hi

I use Outlook 2000. I have placed a lot of mails on the correspondence file.
I hope I express myself correct.
I started with one Outlook panel named "personal field". In this field I had
Inbox, calendar, rough copy, ..... .
I did something ( I can't remember what) and suddenly I got two "personal
fields" and today I have three "personal fields".
Simultaneously all my mails disappeared. And my address book disappeared.
If I go to C:\WINDOWS\Local setting\Programs\Microsoft\Outlook I find the
files archive.pst (292 MB), rough copy.dbx (137 kb), outlook.pst (392 MB,
Personal file(1).pst (48 kb).

I searched for a name in the lost address book and found it in
C:\WINDOWS\temp\outlook, C:\WINDOWS\temp\outlook1, and
C:\WINDOWS\temp\outlook2.
I remembered the name of one of the name of a field in the Inbox and I
searched for this name and found it in C:\WINDOWS\temp\archive and
C:\WINDOWS\temp\archive1.

I feel that my mails and my address book is in the archive, the outlook and
the personal map, but I don't know how to re-establish my original "personal
field".

Anyone who can help me?


Bjorn
(e-mail address removed)

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[Brian Tillman]

I use Outlook 2000. I have placed a lot of mails on the
correspondence file. I hope I express myself correct.
I started with one Outlook panel named "personal field". In this
field I had Inbox, calendar, rough copy, ..... .
I did something ( I can't remember what) and suddenly I got two
"personal fields" and today I have three "personal fields".
Simultaneously all my mails disappeared. And my address book
disappeared. If I go to C:\WINDOWS\Local
setting\Programs\Microsoft\Outlook I find the files archive.pst (292
MB), rough copy.dbx (137 kb), outlook.pst (392 MB, Personal
file(1).pst (48 kb).

The "rough copy.dbx" file is an Outlook Express file and is not used by
Outlook in any way. You can ignore it. It sounds lke the mail profile has
been damaged.

In Outlook, right-click on the root of each set of folders you have and
choose Close to see if any will close.

The most likely candidate for your data file is either the Outlook.pst file
or the Personal Folders(1).pst file. My vote would be for the former. The
archive.pst file is most likely an archive PST and not your active data
file.

I searched for a name in the lost address book and found it in
C:\WINDOWS\temp\outlook, C:\WINDOWS\temp\outlook1, and
C:\WINDOWS\temp\outlook2.
I remembered the name of one of the name of a field in the Inbox and I
searched for this name and found it in C:\WINDOWS\temp\archive and
C:\WINDOWS\temp\archive1.

Depending how you have OL 2000 configured, it will either use its Contacts
folder for storing your addresses or it will use the Windows Address Book,
the same program Outlook Express uses. Can you see your contacts in Outlook
Express? If not, you should be able to click Start>Run and enter "wab.exe"
in the text box and click OK (or Run or Open - I don't recall what Windows
98 uses and from your description of the file paths, I assume that's your
version of Windows). You can then import each ".wab" file you find to see
if it contains your contacts.

I feel that my mails and my address book is in the archive, the
outlook and the personal map, but I don't know how to re-establish my
original "personal field".

In Outlook, click File>Open>Personal Folders File and browse to one of the
PSTs you mention. Select it and click OK. If it opens, you'll be able to
see all of the data in it. Check to make sure it's the data you expect.
If so, select its root in the Folder List view and click File>Properties.
There should be a delivery setting whete you can select this PST as the
delivery location. Do that, then stop and restart Outlook. Close all other
folder sets. If the file you opened doesn't contain the data you want, go
on to the next one.

If you cannot close any of the wrong folder sets, you'll have to delete the
mail profile from the registry with REGEDIT and allow Outlook to create a
new one. Post back if you find that's what you need to do.