Outlook .pab

[Michael Fiedler]

If anyone can get me pointed in the right direction, that would be
great. My son messed up Outlook on my home computer so that in order
for me to log into it, I have to have a floppy in drive A with the
..pab file on it. Somehow he transferred that file to the floppy and
in the course of doing it, must have changed some path unknowingly.
Moving or cutting and pasting the file back onto the C: drive does not
work; it always looks to that A; drive. I have looked, but I can't
find the instruction that tells it to look at the A; drive. I am
guessing I just have to find that and change the A: back to a C;.
The .pab file is located in C:/documents and settings/my name/local
settings/application data/microsoft/outlook
The error I am getting says: Your personal address book could not be
opened. The file is either not accessible or is not a personal
address book.
I am using Windows XP Professional and this affects all users on the
computer.
Any help appreciated.

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

Post your Outlook version.
No version of Outlook has even used a PAB for 7 years. It is unlikely you
were.
Open your Outlook profile from Control panel. Remove the PAB Service and
make sure the profile includes the correct path to your Outlook Data File
(PST file).

 

[Michael Fiedler]

I have Outlook 2002 10.6515.6735, SP3.

The path was as I mentioned in the string ending in Outlook.pst.

I had deleted the .pab from the floppy drive before and when I started
Outlook it didn't like it, because it wanted to see it there, so I had
saved a copy and put it back on the floppy in order to keep Outlook
working.
I did some looking around and did notice that .pab hasn't been used
for several versions. I then deleted that from my folder and lo and
behold, everything worked from the C drive. Did the .pab come with my
installation of Office? What changed to make it want to see that file
and was pointing to it on my A: floppy drive? I am trying to learn as
I fix this.

Your help was right on and extremely beneficial to me and made sense.
Thank you very much!

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

Hard to say what happened. Somehow he configured the Outlook profile look
for its address book information from a PAB file located in the A: drive. It
should be using the Outlook Address Book Service instead. If you reset the
profile to use the Outlook Address Book instead of the PAB and make sure the
connection to its PST file is intact, everything should work as expected.