How to restore MS Office Outlook 2007 folders back in Outlook

Hi Try*3

I received six (6) messages. Please advise the correct order.

Are the following correct?

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5 Further queries

1.       Relocate the Outlook .pst file

2.       Move the backed up .pst files

3.       Review the 53 backed up .pst files

4.       Review each of the remaining backed up .pst files

5.       Before starting. I need to point out one thing.

Thanks Try*3

5  Further queries

If you have any queries about the procedure then please tell me the para that the query relates to in order to help me understand the problem.  Please use the term folder for the things you see in Windows explorer and Outlook folder for the similar-looking things you see within your Outlook pst files themselves.

Doing this much work within Windows explorer & within Outlook is bound to raise unrelated questions about using these applications.  That’s fine but just leave them to the end when the main job is done so that my explanations do not confuse you during this rather awkward task. 

You should consider what to do about that additional user name earleb on your PC as you might well have other files within that area that you don’t want to lose.  You can also ask me about that afterwards as I do not expect it to create any difficulties during the current task.

4  Review each of the remaining backed up pst files

4.1  You will be doing the rest of the work in Outlook itself.

4.2  Look at the Folders list in Outlook.  Create a new Outlook folder with a stupid name so that you will be able to use it as a marker.  You’ll be looking at a lot of similar files and it will be easy to get confused between them - they will probably all have the entries Outlook folders, Calendar, Inbox & so on.  So, before doing anything else, right-click on this Outlook folders and click on New folder… then call it AAAAAAA so it stands out well at the top of the list.

4.3  If you are likely to want to put any of the items from those backed up pst files straight into your Archive.pst then open it now.  In Outlook, click on the File menu then Open then Outlook data file… then browse to & select Archive.pst.  Create a stupid entry called BBBBB in it as well so you also have a good marker for it.

4.4  Now to the real task.  In Outlook, click on the File menu then Open then Outlook data file… then browse to C:\Users\Earle\Desktop\TempBackedUpPST & select the first of the backed up pst files you want to check over.  You’ll see it appear in your Folders list.  Select one of its Outlook folders [Calendar, say] and see what is in there.  You might find it difficult to tell what’s there from its default view so click on the View menu then Current view then All appointments [that is normally in a useful simple list arrangement by default].  Look down the list of entries.  You can sort the view by clicking on column headers so you can review them by date, by name & so on.  When you find an entry that you want to keep, select its icon on the left-hand end of it, press down the ctrl key to make it a copying operation then drag it into the relevant Outlook folder within your proper Outlook.pst [AAAAA] or Archive.pst [BBBBB], then release the mouse button. 

4.5  Do this for every Outlook folder in the selected backed up pst file.  When you do Contacts, the most useful View is probably Phone list.  If you do not use the Journal feature then don’t even look at that Outlook folder.  If you don’t have any Search folders [search definitions] saved then don’t look in that one.  There is probably nothing useful in Deleted items or Junk email.  If you find anything useful within RSS feeds then copy it across but make a note to check the master list in Internet Explorer afterwards.

4.6  When you have done it for every folder you can close that backed up pst file.  Select its highest level folder [probably also called Outlook folders - so check there’s no AAAAA or BBBBB below it] & select Close “its name”.

4.7  Tick that backed up pst file off on your checklist.  Then move that file to the Done folder you made earlier to help guard against accidentally reviewing the same file twice.

4.8  This is the safe point at which to take a break.  I’ve done this task myself before when I’ve got new PC and stopping at any other point lead to errors & great confusion.

4.9  Return to para 4.4 to work through the next backed up pst file.

4.10  When you have finished them all and closed the last one, you can delete AAAAA & BBBBB.  It would also be normal to close Archive.pst if you had that open.  You will probably want to keep the files in C:\Users\Earle\Desktop\TempBackedUpPST for a while until you are confident nothing has been lost. [after that you should be able to have confidence that your normal backup routines are capturing Outlook.pst & Archive.pst so you’ll never get in this mess again]

3  Review the 53 backed up pst files

3.1  Now you can just look at the folder C:\Users\Earle\Desktop\TempBackedUpPST and can close the other Windows explorer window if you want.

3.2  This folder is probably already in a view that shows a Name column & a Date / Date modified column.  If not then look near the top right just below the search box & you’ll see three icons - the left-hand one has a little dropdown arrow next to it & when you hover over it it will show a label More options or Change your view.  Click on the arrow part of it and select Details then you will have the columns I need you to consider.  At the top of the Date / Date modified column, click on the words Date / Date modified of the column header & it will sort the files in date order.

3.3  Now look down the list at the entries that have (2), (3) etc at the end of the file name and also look at the entries just above these.  So you might look at backup.pst, backup (2).pst, backup (3).pst - if these all have the same date-time & are the same size then you can just leave one of them in place [backup.pst] and move backup (2).pst, backup (3).pst into the Duplicates folder you created earlier.  I’m suggesting moving rather than deleting for now as it’s difficult to work with a list of 53 files without making a mistake at least once.

3.4  When you have finished going down the list this way, click on the Name column header.  Look down the list at each group of matching names and look at their dates at the same time.  Take backupcontact.pst as an example.  You’ll probably see backupcontact.pst, backupcontact (2).pst and backupcontact (3).pst.  They would all have been called backupcontact.pst when you made them and the numbers were just added during the earlier moving operation.  If you know how you used to make backupcontact.pst and you know for certain that the one made on 30 November included everything that had previously been in the 30 October version then you can also move that 30 October version into the Duplicates folder.

3.5  When you have finished going down the list this way you will have radically shortened the list of files you have to do any more work with [you might have as few as four files left].  The duplications were caused by the copying into various places you reported in your first couple of posts to this thread but you have now dealt with them.

3.6  You should now make a list of those files to help you with the next stage as it will be very easy to get lost working through a lot of similar files.  *You might never have done this before so I’ll try to be particularly careful in my instructions here.*You’ll see the files in C:\Users\Earle\Desktop\TempBackedUpPST in front of you and you will see the folder name TempBackedUpPST in the left-hand pane of Windows explorer.  Select all the files in the folder.  Press & hold down the Shift key then right-click on the folder name then release the Shift key and select Copy as path.  Open a word processor [Notepad, Word, any other] and Paste then save the file.  You’ll see a list of all the files you have to work with.  You might want to do some tidying up of the list - you can remove the C:\Users\Earle\Desktop\TempBackedUpPST\ from every line to make it easier to see the file names on their own.  You can also sort the files into a specific order - I’d expect any multiple versions of backupcontacts.pst to be the easiest ones to deal with first but that’s just an idea.  Save the file again after any tidying up.  You’ll be using this as a checkoff list so you can print it out or just keep the file open to use it directly.

2  Move the backed up pst files

2.1  You will be working with two Windows explorer windows during this section as well so get them side by side again.  You can leave Outlook open even though you won’t be using it - if it is open then it will help you by issuing a warning dialog if you make a mistake in one particular part of this procedure.

2.2  In one of the Windows explorer windows, go to your Desktop at C:\Users\Earle\Desktop.  Create a new folder on it called TempBackedUpPST then double-click on it to open it.  Inside it create two folders that will help you keep track of what you are going to be doing later - call one of them Duplicates and the other Done.

2.3  In the other Windows explorer window, select Computer and run the .pst search that you did before.  I could see from your screenshot that you had 55 files in the results.

2.4  Look down the search results list for the folder C:\Users\Earle\My Documents\PIM [it appears twice].  Select the two files in that folder [Outlook.pst & Archive.pst] by single-clicking on the first one then ctrl-clicking on the second.  Sorry if I’m teaching you to suck eggs here.  Then press alt-E & select Invert selection.  You will now see at the bottom of the window that you have 53 items selected.

2.5  Drag the 53 items across and drop them in C:\Users\Earle\Desktop\TempBackedUpPST so that you move them all there.  If any of the 53 were actually from separate drives then they would copy instead of move but that is not a problem and I do not think that applies anyway.  Because Windows will detect that some of them have the same name, you will be asked what to do - There is already a file with the same name in this location.  When this happens, set the checkbox for Do this for all conflicts then click on Move, but keep both files.