Finding account and message rule files

[Guest]

I recently had to restore Outlook from a backup, after needing to reformat my
C: drive. I was able to restore the outlook.pst and extend.dat files, and
seemed to recover my saved emails, calender, etc, but was not able to recover
my account information and message rules. Since I saved a complete full
backup of my C: drive before reformatin, I'm sure I have the information
somewhere in that backup file, but have no idea where to locate it. Any
assistance with that will be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Brian Tillman]

I recently had to restore Outlook from a backup, after needing to
reformat my C: drive. I was able to restore the outlook.pst and
extend.dat files, and seemed to recover my saved emails, calender,
etc, but was not able to recover my account information and message
rules. Since I saved a complete full backup of my C: drive before
reformatin, I'm sure I have the information somewhere in that backup
file, but have no idea where to locate it. Any assistance with that
will be appreciated. Thanks.

What version of Outlook. For recent versions, if you're not using Exchange,
I believe rules are kept in the PST and if you add your PST correctly yo
your mail profile (do not import), then you should have them. They may need
to be adjusted, but they should be there. That said, though, it's a good
idea to export them to a .rwz file and transfer them with the PST, importing
them again with the Rules Wizard just to be safe.

Your account information is kept in the Windows registry. Some versions of
Office have the Save My Settings wizard and that should allow you to
transfer your account data. Conceivably, exporting the proper registry keys
and importing them on the other PC would also do the job, although I think
the passwords would need resetting.

 

[Guest]

Brian,

I'm using Office XP (I believe that's 2002). I restored the Outlook.pst
file that I had previously backed up, but it doesn't seem to contain any
message rules. Any other ideas there? Also, if the account information is
in the Registry, is there any way I can get the newly installed Outlook to
find that information?

 

[Brian Tillman]

I'm using Office XP (I believe that's 2002). I restored the
Outlook.pst file that I had previously backed up, but it doesn't seem
to contain any message rules.

How did you "restore"?

 

[Guest]

I am using Novastor Novabackup (v 7.3), which seems a pretty adequate
program. I moved the existing Outlook files from Documents and
Settings\LStone\local settings\applications\microsoft\outlook, and then did a
restore to original location from Novastor. This worked just fine when I did
it with folders from the My Documents directory. The resulting restore
brought back all of the message boxes and stored emails, but not the account
or message rules settings.

Something else, which I hope you might have some idea of. Although my
contacts are all restored and up to date (synced with ActiveSync to my Dell
Axim PDA), my address book appears empty. I can get into any of my contacts
just fine, but don't know how to tell the address book how to find the
contacts. Any ideas on that one?

 

[Brian Tillman]

I am using Novastor Novabackup (v 7.3), which seems a pretty adequate
program. I moved the existing Outlook files from Documents and
Settings\LStone\local settings\applications\microsoft\outlook, and
then did a restore to original location from Novastor. This worked
just fine when I did it with folders from the My Documents directory.
The resulting restore brought back all of the message boxes and
stored emails, but not the account or message rules settings.

Correct. It also is a good way to corrupt your mail profile. You can't
just dump a PST into the default location and expect Outlook to configure
itself to use it properly.

Something else, which I hope you might have some idea of. Although my
contacts are all restored and up to date (synced with ActiveSync to
my Dell Axim PDA), my address book appears empty. I can get into any
of my contacts just fine, but don't know how to tell the address book
how to find the contacts. Any ideas on that one?

By performing the restore the way you did, you disrupted the connection
between the address book srevice and the Contacts folder of the PST. Remove
the Outlook Address Book service from the mail profile, stop and restart
Outlook, add the Outlook Address Book service back in, and again stop and
restart Outlook. Then right-click Contacts, choose Properties, select the
Outlook Address Book tab and select the box labeled "Show this folder as an
e-mail Address Book" if it's not already selected.

 

[Guest]

Brian,

Thanks for the info on restoring my contacts folder. It worked, and my
address book is back to normal. In case I'm ever in this situation again,
how should I have restored my Outlook.pst settings from the backup so that
the file would not have become corrupted?

 

[Brian Tillman]

Thanks for the info on restoring my contacts folder. It worked, and
my address book is back to normal. In case I'm ever in this
situation again, how should I have restored my Outlook.pst settings
from the backup so that the file would not have become corrupted?

See if this helps: http://www.howto-outlook.com/howto/backupandrestore.htm