Outlook 2002 file retrieval.

[dg6464]

I have a question about Microsoft Outlook 2002 (part of office, not Outlook Express). I have many clients machines come through that have never thought of, or have never been told to back up their Outlook data into a .PST file for easy retrieval. When the inevitable happens, and their hard drive crashes, 90% of the time data is accessible from the hard-drive (documents, MP3's ect..) but unlike outlook express which stores it's e-mails and address book ect.. in the "identities" and "application data\microsoft\address book" folders, microsoft outlook 2002 does not store all of the calender, contacts list, e-mails, ect.. does it? I have a customer today that has over 6000 e-mails, and a huge amount of contacts stored in outlook 2002, and i know your all thinking "why would you be so stupid not to back this important data up?!?", and the simple answer is because they are a customer, and people never think it will happen to them, but it does. So my question to you amazing group of geneouses in this forum, is as follows: are there any files that all your outlook data are stored in, when they are not backed up into a .PST file? it would make total sense if there were, due to the fact that each time you boot up outlook, all of your data is still there, even if you haven't backed it up, it would make logical sense that these files are stored somehwere on your drive, and just by copying, or importing these files you can retrive data. I have quite a few customers that would benefit greatly from this because data is retrievable, but booting into windows is not, so any help on this topic would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! Hope someone else has had experience with this.

 

[riser]

Everything is stored in an OST or PST file. If it's in an OST, all that information is stored on the server.

Information will either be stored in a PST locally to the computer and deleted on the server, or on an OST where it's stored locally and left on the server.

If you set up an account like she had and sync, it should pull all that information down.

It's stored in the app data/microsoft/outlook area. I'm not sure if you could set the account up, then copy the outlook data over to see if it appeared.

You could set Outlook to deliver files to a personal folder and not use OST files though.

You would need to export the current information into a PST file, then you could import it, but it would be as a personal folder and not stored in her actual Inbox, unless you configure Outlook to do so.