Restoring another PST?

[Dave Jennings]

Hi everyone,

I use the MS Outlook Backup tool, and it backs up daily. Early this
week I imported the backed-up PST file ( over 1GB ) into my new PC and
after a bit of fiddling to show the folders it did open up all the ones
I wanted, yet seemed to be an old backup - maybe 12 weeks out of date.

I had to use the machine so kept it like this, and have of course
received many mails since then. I see another copy of the backup[ PST
file and the date says it was created on Feb 19th, which would be right.

My ( evantual! ) question is:

how do I, in idiot-proof steps, go about restoring this other backup to
see if that shows all the mails, whilst hopefully keeping the mails I
received since last week? Do I save these individually somewhere as
messages, run the restore, and then if appropriate just drag and drop
into the inbox?

Many thanks in advance.

 

[Brian Tillman]

My ( evantual! ) question is:

how do I, in idiot-proof steps, go about restoring this other backup
to see if that shows all the mails, whilst hopefully keeping the
mails I received since last week? Do I save these individually
somewhere as messages, run the restore, and then if appropriate just
drag and drop into the inbox?

In Outlook, click FIle>Open>Outlook Data File, browse to that other PST,
select it, and click OK. It should open and you'll be able to look through
it to see if it contains the data you want. If so, you can copy the missing
data from that PST to your current delivery PST.

 

[Dave Jennings]

Brian Tillman yik-yakked:

In Outlook, click FIle>Open>Outlook Data File, browse to that other
PST, select it, and click OK. It should open and you'll be able to
look through it to see if it contains the data you want. If so, you
can copy the missing data from that PST to your current delivery PST.

Thanks Brian,

Can I just check something - sorry if it's totally stupid!

I've replicated the mailboxes that I had ( Inbox and two others ) in
the "new" Outlook so if I open this other outlook data file, does it
only show me almost like a directory what's there rather than importing
it again? I don't want to have duplicates.

Many thanks for your advice, I *really* appreciate it!

 

[Brian Tillman]

Can I just check something - sorry if it's totally stupid!

I've replicated the mailboxes that I had ( Inbox and two others ) in
the "new" Outlook so if I open this other outlook data file, does it
only show me almost like a directory what's there rather than
importing it again? I don't want to have duplicates.

A fundamental tenet is that you should rarely, if ever, import a PST into
Outlook under any circumstances. Some of the data in a PST is not imported
and thus is lost if you do import. FIle>Open is almost always the way to
go.

Opening a PST in Outlook will not affect your current PST in any way. Each
PST will have a completely independent folder tree. You can use
drag-and-drop or right-click>Copy or right-click>Move to suffle things
around to your liking.

 

[Dave Jennings]

Brian Tillman yik-yakked:

A fundamental tenet is that you should rarely, if ever, import a PST
into Outlook under any circumstances.

Many thanks Brian - I had worded that wrongly, I didn't import
originally I did point the new Outlook to the backed up PST instead.

I'll do the File>Open procedure now I know what to expect!

Best regards,

Dave.