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How to recover missing mail

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by ijusth1 1 view

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My old hard drive got replaced due to a flaky OS (XP with sp2). Installed a new OS and then Office. Moved all my folders over to he new drive (at least I thought I did LOL). Set up Outlook and found all my old email missing. I do NOT use a PST (but checked for one on the new drive and found nothing). Aso checked for any OST files and nada. Outlook Express has some old DBX files but not what I want. I haven't over written the old drive (it will become my backup drive eventually) so if I know where Outlook stores email that would help since I could do an undelete.

6 replies

by thechas

I was not aware it was even possible to use Outlook without an Outlook.PST file as that is the default storage file for ALL of your Outlook mail and settings.

The default file path in Outlook 2003 on Windows XP is:

C:\Documents and Settings\{User Name}\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

Open Outlook and use the Import tool to see if you can find your old mail on the old drive by browsing to your documents file as above.

Now, it is possible that you cannot see the PST file as Windows might be hiding it from you.

Also, on some networks, the .PST file is stored on the server rather than the local drive.

Charlie

by ijusth1

hmmmm I think I missed the obvious. The search function doesn' look for hidden files unless yo click on search inside hidden folders (which this one is I think). I think that is the solution. Stay tuned.

by ijusth1

thanks. Found the file. Corrupted and missing a lot of messages but better then nothing.

by sgmansell

I am having the same problem with my old harddrive. The OS section crashed but the rest of the HD is OK. I have copied over most of my old data files but when I looked for my .pst file it only had one from 2005. I think Outlook only updates the pst file when you export your data. And yet, before the OS went south I had all my current data. This means Outlook keeps the data somewhere other than the pst file. I have been able to open the old Outlook.exe but it still looks at c: for its files. How can I tell it to look at my old drive so I can update my pst file? Or, where does that data reside before it is saved into the pst file?

by mike

For anyone else having problems finding the outlook pst files.

A search, looking in hidden folders, found no pst files on my old hard disk.

I eventually found the file in;

J:\Documents and Settings\Mike\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

This is a hidden folder, so make sure you have set the folder options to see hidden files.

Hope this helps someone else!

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