Recovering emails from .ost files

[Kevin Vivian]

A network server has broken but there is a file "outlook.ost" on my
local computer. Does this file hold copies of my emails? How can I
read them, please?

 

[Sandor Teglasy]

Yes, it does. Log on to Outlook in offline mode (on the General tab of
Control Panel > Mail. set "When starting" to "Manually control connection
state" and check "choose the connection type when starting.

Then you will see the mails if offline access was enabled before the server
went down. (you could check date stamp and file size to figure out, whether
the .ost file was actually in use befored the server went down)

 

[Kevin Vivian]

Great. Thanks.

Yes, it does. Log on to Outlook in offline mode (on the General tab of
Control Panel > Mail. set "When starting" to "Manually control connection
state" and check "choose the connection type when starting.

Then you will see the mails if offline access was enabled before the server
went down. (you could check date stamp and file size to figure out, whether
the .ost file was actually in use befored the server went down)

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

A network server has broken

No backups on the server?

but there is a file "outlook.ost" on my
local computer. Does this file hold copies of my emails? How can I
read them, please?

Disconnect your computer from the network, just in case - then open Outlook.
It will open offline. Export everything to a PST file using file |
import/export.