Contacts missing and two personal folders

[John Michl]

I upgraded to Outlook 2003 a few months ago. I migrated my contacts
and personal files but things just don't seem quite write. I'm not sure
where to make the changes. Note this version is used on a home PC and
not connected to an Exchange survey.

1) Folder list - If I collapse all folders two Personal Folders remain
and no other folders. In previous versions of Outlook, I recall a main
Outlook Folder and then a Personal Folder. The icons for these two
personal folders are different. One looks like a piece of paper with a
clock and house over it. The other looks like a series of file
folders. The contents of these folders appear identical and have the
same number of subfolders (Calendar, Contacts, Deleted Items, Inbox,
etc.) plus all of my own folders under the inbox. The number of items
is identical between the two main folders. (If 23 unread in the first
inbox, there are 23 unread in the second.

Question: Why are there two? Is one from my old version or an old PC?
Can I delete one and if so which one?

2) Contacts and E-mail - I seem to have the address book pointed to one
of these Personal Contact folders. When I click TO: the list of
contacts shows up. (This started to work tonight after reading some
other posts.) However, I still can't type in a name and have Outlook
automatically search the contacts folder. Where would I make this
happen?

Thanks.

- John

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

There are two files because you migrated your Outlook data incorrectly and
corrupted your profile.
Create a new profile and read the Help files so you may migrate your data
correctly.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA010771141033.aspx

 

[John Michl]

Thanks Russ. I created a new profile then imported the contents of my
old PST into the new profile PST. All is well now.

- John

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

Ick. Importing is not a good idea, nor did the article say to do so.
Hopefully, you lost none of the data you needed.

 

[John Michl]

I tried following the article but continued to get two identical
personal folders each time probably because the PST file had the two
files already. When I would try to remove one as suggested in the
article, I'd run into error messages such as the "file doesn't exist."
So, I made two backups of everything (to be sure I was covered),
created a new profile, reentered my e-mail settings and imported into
that PST from one of my backups. All of the counts matched. All works
as I hoped.

- John

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

Must have been something else you were doing wrong. No PST file can contain
another.
The instructions work fine when followed correctly, but are a bit tricky.
Unfortunately, Outlook 2003 is notorious for creating duplicate or ghost PST
files. It's a real pain.
As long as your import didn't lose any data, you're fine the way it is.