contacts missing on re-install of XP & OL 2003

[Greta Grip]

Hi,

Had to reinstall SP Sp2 and then Office 2003 student/teacher edition on new
notebook. Dragged the .pst and assorted files from an external hard drive
to the notebook to: drive:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Local
Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook,
drive:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Microsoft\Signatures,
and I think drive:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application
Data\Microsoft\Outlook.

The personal folders and calendar opened fine, but the Contacts will not
open.

I get an error message:



The address list could not be displayed. The contacts folder with this
address list could not be opened; it may have been moved or deleted, or you
do not have permissions. For information on how to remove this folder from
the OUtlook Address Book, see microsoft Office Outlook help.

Do the contacts reside elsewhere??? And not in the .pst file??

Thanks!
Carmen

 

[Brian Tillman]

Had to reinstall SP Sp2 and then Office 2003 student/teacher edition
on new notebook. Dragged the .pst and assorted files from an
external hard drive to the notebook to: drive:\Documents and
Settings\<user>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook,
drive:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application
Data\Microsoft\Signatures, and I think drive:\Documents and
Settings\<user>\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook.

The personal folders and calendar opened fine, but the Contacts will
not open.

No need to post three times.

By dragging your PST around like you did you've damaged your mail profile.
Not badly, but it's damaged nonetheless.

If I were you, I'd start with a new mail profile, pointing it at your
existing PST and adding in your accounts again. You can also try removing
hte Outlook Address Book service from your existing profile, stopping and
restarting Outlook, then adding the service back in.

 

[Greta Grip]

Hi Brian,

The posting 3 times was an error. For some reason after reinstalling the
operating system and then all the software and configuring, when I went to
newsgroups and posted, I didn't get the familiar window: Your message is
being posted to newsgroups...it may take a few moments for it to
appear...(not verbatim), so I thought perhaps it didn't work. I waited for
several minutes continuing to refresh the window, and my message didn't
appear so I thought my posting didn't work. Was at wits end, Sorry.

Re: the issue at hand, tried your second fix and received the same error
message. I'm talking about contacts and not address book - never understood
the difference, and not sure if that matters, but nonetheless, it didn't
work.

I started to try creating a new profile but seemed like it didn't work. Do
you know where there are instructions to do such?

What about uninstalling outlook or office, reinstalling and attempting to
follow the advice on microsoft's site to "Reconnect your old Outlook data
file" at: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA010771141033.aspx

But will that alone get me all of my custom categories, signatures, and
calendar views and features I've created?

Thanks again,

carmen

 

[Brian Tillman]

Re: the issue at hand, tried your second fix and received the same
error message. I'm talking about contacts and not address book -
never understood the difference, and not sure if that matters, but
nonetheless, it didn't work.

The Address Book service is a view of your Contacts folder and tells Outlook
how to resolve a name into an email address.

I started to try creating a new profile but seemed like it didn't
work. Do you know where there are instructions to do such?

A new profile definitely WILL resolve an issue like you described
originally. See this:
http://www.howto-outlook.com/faq/newprofile.htm

What about uninstalling outlook or office, reinstalling and
attempting to follow the advice on microsoft's site to "Reconnect
your old Outlook data file" at:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA010771141033.aspx

I think that's more than you need to do.

But will that alone get me all of my custom categories, signatures,
and calendar views and features I've created?

Signatures are stored in %AppData%\Microsoft\Signatures and you should be
able to reference them from any mail profile for your Windows username.
Views are in the PST, I believe, so they should be intact. I'm not sure
about categories. You might want to look at this:
http://www.slipstick.com/config/backup.htm