Categories are gone after re-install of Office 2003

[geezaflip]

When I had to reinstall Office 2003 after a computer disk wipe, it began
with a new pst file because I did not copy my pst file to the correct place.
I have all the bugs about that worked out except for a very important one.
I had a set of categories that are now gone. Is it possible to import them
back into my current pst file or somewhere so I can use them?

 

[Christian Goeller]

geezaflip, you wrote on Thu, 29 Sep 2005 16:02:37 -0600:

When I had to reinstall Office 2003 after a computer disk wipe, it began
with a new pst file because I did not copy my pst file to the correct place.
I have all the bugs about that worked out except for a very important one.
I had a set of categories that are now gone. Is it possible to import them
back into my current pst file or somewhere so I can use them?

Outlook's categories are stored in the Windows registry

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Categories

But - obviously this key was deleted during the uninstallation of
Outlook :-(. So you have to redefine all your categories!

 

[geezaflip]

How would I save this registry item so I would not have to re-enter them in
the future?

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

export that key. But they aren't really lost - any item using a category
that is missing from the list is still there.

this should work to make them easy to back up, move and restore next time:
create an item (and item with work - contact might be easiest to find) - and
add all categories to it. (You'll need to update it as you add new
categories.)

When you need to restore the categories, open it and add them to the master
list. (select and cut the categories from the upper field, remove the checks
from the lists in the lower part, paste the list in the upper field and
choose add to list.