Reinstalled Office 2003 and lost all e-mails and contacts

[Guest]

Yesterday, Outlook was not sending and receiving as it should, so I tried to
trouble shoot. I found Detect and Repair under the Help section and clicked
on Start, hoping it would find and fix my problem. Shortly after doing that,
I thought that it might not be wise to do, so I stopped the process. At that
point, I could no longer use any of the Office products, so I reinstalled
Office using my original CD. All of my Office products are now fine, but
I've lost all of my e-mails and contacts. I've been reading about recovery
and .pst files but none of that makes any sense to me. Any insight is
appreciated.

 

[Peter Foldes]

Your pst files should be on your computer. Have you done a search for them with Show All files enabled. You did not mention your Windows version so I am not able to tell the location of these pst files to you.
Once you found them then copy them to their default location of your newly set up outlook.It should bring back all your account info with your saved emails

 

[Guest]

Make sure you do not overwrite your outlook.pst file when you copy to your
hard drive. Then use File, Open OL data file on the OL menu to open it.

 

[Guest]

Peter and Mary: Thanks for your replies, however, I'm still stumped. (By
the way, I'm running XP Media Center Edition.) Yes, I've now found the .pst
files, but (1) how do I copy them? and (2) how do I find the "default
location"?

By the way, after I created my post, I imported the .pst files. That
process brought in quite a few deleted and sent e-mails but all from April
'06 and prior. I have nothing from April '06 to the present in any folders.

Thanks again. The mystery continues....