Consolidating Multiple Personal Folders

[Lee CHapelle]

Hi all

I have created a bit of a mess. I am running Vista Ultimate and Outlook
2007. My system crashed and I had to restore it from an image. What I did
then was to copy the old pst file to a location D:\ on a different partition
then I pointed Tools->Options->Mail Setup->Data Files to the new location
then made it the default. As a result I now have two Personal Folder
hierarchies, but what is worse, incoming mail that is unfiltered goes into
the upper Inbox, while the mail that I am filtering into other folders goes
into the respective folders in the lower hierarchy. How would one go about
getting back to a single set of folders? I have a few ideas floating around
in my head but I thought I'd ask the experts before I dig myself an even
deeper hole. There is still an outlook.pst in the default location, but it
does not contain recent emails.

thanks in advance

Lee Chapelle

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

Hi Lee,
Normally what you did would work just fine. The symptoms you describe are
usually what happens if you copied your PST to Outlook's default location
instead of a neutral location or tried to import that PST file. At any rate,
duplicate PST's mean you now have a corrupt Outlook profile. You'll need to
create a new Outlook profile from scratch. I've always had the best luck if
you simply let the new profile create its new, empty, default PST (it always
does and there's no way to stop it). Then you should open the PST you want
to use in that profile, set it as the default, restart Outlook, then close
the new, empty PST file Outlook created. You'll need to reset your Outlook
Address Book service to display your Contacts Folder, but everything should
work after that.

 

[Lee CHapelle]

Thanks Russ, I started doing that but it got to be too much work so I went
back and removed the extra Personal Folders by removing the extra entries in
the Data File dialogue, repaired whatever pst files I could find with
scanpst.exe then imported all messages in over top, not creating duplicates.
I had to re-do Rules and folders, now everything seems OK.

Hi Lee,
Normally what you did would work just fine. The symptoms you describe are
usually what happens if you copied your PST to Outlook's default location
instead of a neutral location or tried to import that PST file. At any
rate, duplicate PST's mean you now have a corrupt Outlook profile. You'll
need to create a new Outlook profile from scratch. I've always had the
best luck if you simply let the new profile create its new, empty, default
PST (it always does and there's no way to stop it). Then you should open
the PST you want to use in that profile, set it as the default, restart
Outlook, then close the new, empty PST file Outlook created. You'll need
to reset your Outlook Address Book service to display your Contacts
Folder, but everything should work after that.
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]

Hi all

I have created a bit of a mess. I am running Vista Ultimate and Outlook
2007. My system crashed and I had to restore it from an image. What I did
then was to copy the old pst file to a location D:\ on a different
partition then I pointed Tools->Options->Mail Setup->Data Files to the
new location then made it the default. As a result I now have two
Personal Folder hierarchies, but what is worse, incoming mail that is
unfiltered goes into the upper Inbox, while the mail that I am filtering
into other folders goes into the respective folders in the lower
hierarchy. How would one go about getting back to a single set of
folders? I have a few ideas floating around in my head but I thought I'd
ask the experts before I dig myself an even deeper hole. There is still
an outlook.pst in the default location, but it does not contain recent
emails.

thanks in advance

Lee Chapelle

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

So were you able to close the second PST file after you transferred the
information from it?
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]

Thanks Russ, I started doing that but it got to be too much work so I went
back and removed the extra Personal Folders by removing the extra entries
in the Data File dialogue, repaired whatever pst files I could find with
scanpst.exe then imported all messages in over top, not creating
duplicates. I had to re-do Rules and folders, now everything seems OK.

Hi Lee,
Normally what you did would work just fine. The symptoms you describe are
usually what happens if you copied your PST to Outlook's default location
instead of a neutral location or tried to import that PST file. At any
rate, duplicate PST's mean you now have a corrupt Outlook profile. You'll
need to create a new Outlook profile from scratch. I've always had the
best luck if you simply let the new profile create its new, empty,
default PST (it always does and there's no way to stop it). Then you
should open the PST you want to use in that profile, set it as the
default, restart Outlook, then close the new, empty PST file Outlook
created. You'll need to reset your Outlook Address Book service to
display your Contacts Folder, but everything should work after that.
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]

Hi all

I have created a bit of a mess. I am running Vista Ultimate and Outlook
2007. My system crashed and I had to restore it from an image. What I
did then was to copy the old pst file to a location D:\ on a different
partition then I pointed Tools->Options->Mail Setup->Data Files to the
new location then made it the default. As a result I now have two
Personal Folder hierarchies, but what is worse, incoming mail that is
unfiltered goes into the upper Inbox, while the mail that I am filtering
into other folders goes into the respective folders in the lower
hierarchy. How would one go about getting back to a single set of
folders? I have a few ideas floating around in my head but I thought I'd
ask the experts before I dig myself an even deeper hole. There is still
an outlook.pst in the default location, but it does not contain recent
emails.

thanks in advance

Lee Chapelle