Outlook 2003 Vista Upgrade Missing Files

[Guest]

A few days ago, I upgraded a client's desktop computer from Windows XP SP2 to
Vista Ultimate. Normally, I wipe the hard disk clean to avoid problems, but
due to some software on the machine that needed to be saved, I chose to use
the 'Upgrade' option. Everything else worked fine, but in Outlook 2003, all
of the email folders and address books are gone. This is a problem, a really
big problem. There is no official notice about this, and my client is very
concerned about it.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

did you look for the old user account in windows explorer?
http://www.outlook-tips.net/beginner/filepath.htm

 

[Guest]

As far as I can tell, all of the user files, including Outlook.pst were
migrated to the /users/username/appdata/local/ folder with the Vista upgrade.
The folder / filename mentioned in the guide doesn't exist in Vista. The
problem here is that the Outlook.pst is a fresh one, not the one my client
had before. All of the personal folders are missing, not to mention several
megs of important emails are gone as well.

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

How large is the pst in the local folder? If it's not very large, and if the
previous pst wasn't backed up for attempting the upgrade, it looks like it
was overwritten in the upgrade. If so, it's gone.

Note: while we normally recommend reusing an old data file and don't
recommend importing, a new pst seems to be better if you are upgrading to
ol2007.

Also, please include previous content in replies - it makes it easier for
everyone to know what is going on and what was already tried.

 

[Guest]

The Outlook.pst file that is in the user's folder is about 7 megs, and after
doing some more research on the diagnosis of those files, I found that there
is a repair tool in the /Program Files/Common Files/System/MSMAPI/ directory
that looks through .pst files and tries to restore them. The tool found a
couple errors in the file, showed that there were 10 folders in it, and
proceeded to 'fix' the file and make a backup of it. The new 'fixed'
Outlook.pst file was still 7 megs (it had gained about 20 bytes or so), so I
thought I was in business.

Nothing changed in Outlook though. I tried to load up the new .pst through
file->open->outlook data and there was still just the same stock folders as
there were before, and no new additional folders, and still an empty address
book. I ran the utility on the new .pst file and there were no errors, so it
had definitely fixed something, just not what I wanted. I made sure to do a
check disk to make sure the hard drive wasn't going down, and there was no
problems with that, so the problem is only with the fact that XP was upgraded
to Vista.

Now I need to know if the file is supposed to be 7 megs (which seems rather
large if it were empty), and if all that data is still contained within that
file, but is just not accessible through that tool or through outlook itself,
how do I get to it? Going through 7 megs of garbage with a text editor is
just about the last thing I want to do.