How to restore MS Office Outlook 2007 folders back in Outlook

0  Introduction

Before starting, I need to point out one thing.  All the “folders” you see when looking around inside Outlook [such as Outlook folders, Inbox, Calendar] are just objects within the Outlook.pst file.  It’s a handy way for Outlook to display them.  They are not the same as folders you see within Windows explorer such as C:\Users\Earle\Documents.  I think there has been some confusion between the two before in this question so, just to be on the safe side, I’ll refer to “Outlook folders” [if I’m referring to one of the folders within Outlook] or “folders” [if I mean something in Windows explorer]. 

I can see from  your screenshot that you have created the user name Earle and I can tell from one of your answers that Earle is the user name you are actually working in.  Many of your files are within a user name earleb but I think that will not be a problem as you seem to have full access to that area of the drive anyway [judging from your search results].

I will provide instructions for putting the Outlook.pst file in the folder C:\Users\Earle\My Documents\PIM as I don’t understand the comment you have made as your Decision 1.  I think you were getting confused between “Outlook folders” & “folders” when you wrote that comment.  But there’s no need to worry as, when you finish the instructions, you’ll be able to see everything you expect [such as Outlook folders, Inbox, Calendar] when you open Outlook.  The reason I am suggesting C:\Users\Earle\My Documents\PIM is that having the Outlook.pst file within your normal documents folders means that it will always get backed up by whatever routine backup plan you follow.

I have given detailed instructions because it’s not possible to look over your shoulder while you are doing it.  I have probably gone into more detail than is necessary in some places but I was keen to ensure that I coped with any possible errors along the way.  It will take you longer to read some of my instructions than to do the action concerned.

The stages in this are

1  Relocate the Outlook.pst file to C:\Users\Earle\My Documents\PIM

2  Move 53 of the 55 backed up pst files on your PC to a single folder so you have a single place to work from.

3  Review the 53 backed up pst files to identify duplicates so you don’t waste your time looking at multiple copies of the same file [I noticed some entries that appeared to be duplicates in your earlier screenshot]

4  Review each of the remaining backed up pst files in turn from within Outlook itself so you can move all the useful information into the main Outlook.pst file or into the Archive.pst file if you prefer.  You will not have to do all the files at once; you will be able to do a one at a time then come back to the job whenever you feel like it.

I’ve posted each stage separately in the hope of keeping things as clear as they can be.

1   Relocate the Outlook.pst file

1.1  Close Outlook

1.2  Minimise all your open windows so you have a blank desktop to work with.

1.3  Open Windows explorer.  Open Windows explorer again so you have two windows open.  Right-click on the TaskBar and select Show windows side by side.

1.4  In one window, go to C:\Users\Earle\My Documents [by the way, you will sometimes see this appearing as C:\Users\Earle\My Documents and sometimes as C:\Users\Earle\Documents but they are both the same thing - one is just an alias of the other].  Double-click on C:\Users\Earle\My Documents to open it up then right-click, select New then Folder.  Call the new folder PIM and double click on it to open it.  You can confirm where you are by looking at the address bar at the top of Windows explorer & you will see that you are now in C:\Users\Earle\My Documents\PIM.

1.5  In the other window, go to C:\Users\Earle\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook and you will see Outlook.pst, Archive.pst and several other files [including other pst files but you have to ignore them for now].

1.6  Select Outlook.pst and Archive.pst only then drag them across to C:\Users\Earle\My Documents\PIM and let go of the mouse. 

1.7  Just as a precaution, in C:\Users\Earle\My Documents\PIM, select both Outlook.pst and Archive.pst then right-click, select Send to then Compressed [zipped] folder.  Doing this will ensure that you can start again if anything goes horribly wrong later.  The reason for making zipped files rather than straightforward copies is that you already have 55 copies of pst files dotted around your drive and you don’t want any more of them confusing the procedure.

1.8  Open Outlook and wait for it to complain that it cannot find its pst file[s].  In the dialog that opens, browse to C:\Users\Earle\My Documents\PIM, select Outlook.pst and click on Open.  Outlook will now open the same file as it was using before and will go on doing so every time it opens from now on.

1.9  There’s a bit of tidying up to do that is associated with the Archive.pst file and this might confuse you as you might not have been aware of what it was before.  You are welcome to ask me any questions about this or any other aspect of Outlook after you have completed the sorting out that you want to do but for now I think it best to deal with the procedure rather than how to make use of the AutoArchive facility. 

1.9.1  Click on the Outlook Tools menu then Options then the Other tab.  [If the menu bar showing Tools is not visible then press Alt-t to get it visible temporarily.]  Click on the AutoArchive button.  About halfway down this dialog there is the folder path & name of your archive file next to the entry Move old items to.  In this address box [where it has the old location still] enter C:\Users\Earle\My Documents\PIM\Archive.pst instead and then click on OK, OK to get you back to the main window.

1.9.2  There are references to the archive location in your other Outlook folders as well so they need to be checked.  In the Folders List view, right-click on Calendar and select Properties then the AutoArchive tab.  You might see most of this dialog greyed out if you have Do not archive items in this folder set.  Temporarily select Archive this folder using these settings then put the new archive location in the address box C:\Users\Earle\My Documents\PIM\Archive.pst then put back to your previous setting of Do not archive items in this folder if applicable.  Then click the OK button.

1.9.3  Repeat 1.9.2 for each of the Outlook folders after Calendar except Contacts & Search folders [they have no AutoArchive tab].  Note that you do not have to select the Outlook folder concerned, just right-click on it [this only makes a difference with Journal as selecting that will start it doing its job and you’ll have to wait while it does so].  Your Outlook folders will include Calendar, Deleted items, Drafts, Inbox, Journal, Junk email, Notes, Outbox, RSS feeds, Sent items & Tasks.  You might also have created additional Outlook folders so do them as well [you’ll see in my earlier screenshot, for example, that I have also created Outlook folders called Calendar archive, OddsNSods, Routine].

1.9.5  That’s it.  You have relocated your Outlook files to within your documents folders so they can get included in routine backups and you have worked through updating the AutoArchive locations to match the new location.  You can stop & swear or have a cup of tea now if you want.

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.

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.