Recover Outlook Address book from bad drive.

[xxsilk109xx]

I have a hard drive here with bad sectors and wont boot from an older computer. Customer has purchased new computer and wants data backed up..No problem. I have been requested to backup the address book for outlook.

I have found the files on the drive.
archive, extend, outlook, and outlook1.pst.

I understand that you need to "open" the archive.pst file from within the new computer and it will copy over the address book. My question is if it will overwrite anything? This is for a church and I dont want to mess anything up over there.

Will it also send over the emails as well?

Never tried to do this with outlook before...this is regular outlook...not outlook express..

Did I see a tool that did this before???

 

[Appleby]

I've done this before in the exact scenario except that I recovered the whole PST file and opened it on the new pc that I'd just installed Outlook on....so there was no danger of loosing/overwriting anything on the new computer. Since I don't know enough about Outlook to make you any promises on what it will and won't do, how about this, go to another computer with Outlook that isn't being used (or install it on another computer or download a trial) and test it there. If you can get the PST file open, you should be able to export the Address Book at that point.

I know that's not alot of help but it's a start.

Worst case, I'd back up the whole PST file and everything on the new computer before attempting to open the old one. But for me, I'd try it on another machine where the user doesn't use Outlook.

 

[xxsilk109xx]

Ok well I am sure that she has already started on outlook on another computer. So I am thinking that it would overwrite her data. I just want to get the contacts out, that is all she cares about. I found this program, that will let me view the pst file but i cant figure out how to export that data, into say an html file or a text file so that I can at least print it out or give it to her on file so she can re inert all that data...

anyone know of a program that will do this freeware?

 

[Vicenarian]

not sure if this will work or not...but, I'm thinking...

Import the .PST file into a new installation of Windows Mail. Then, use the export feature of Windows Mail to export the file into a different format?

 

[NeutronTech]

Can't you just import the old .pst file into the new .pst file? That should just append the changes, I would thing, since your importing it instead of just copying it.

Been forever since I've used or dealt with anything Outlook related, so just a theory.

 

[Harold]

You can add any .PST as an additional mailbox data file and it will just appear as a new top level mailbox under their primary mailbox. As long as you have the primary mailbox already setup as the folder to deliver mail to it won't start shifting any messages around.

Now, weather you can pull the address book out of the mailbox if added as a secondary data file is something I've never tried. If it doesn't work, I would create a new mail profile pointing to the old .pst as the primary data file and then export the address book from the new profile.

 

[Appleby]

I like the Windows Mail idea. Seems the safest and you should be able to backup the Contacts from there.

 

[Feraxks]

You just need to open the PST file with your current version of Outlook and all the data will be available to you. Nothing gets overwritten. The address book will be available for you to do a simple cut and paste of the contacts from the olf address book to the new one.

 

[geekgee]

The way Feraxks suggested to do it will work fine.

You can also import the Contacts from the old PST into the new one.

In Outlook, you just go into File->Import and Export->Import from another program or file->Personal Folder File (.pst). You will have the option of how to handle any duplicates entries (replace, allow duplicates or do not import).

I have developed a preference for doing it this way over the many times I have had to do it. I have a client who is still running Outlook 2000 and I regularly have to create new PST files for them when they hit the 2GB file size limit in that release. Outlook 2003 and greater don't have that limitation.

If you are concerned about doing something unintentional, just copy the new PST somewhere else before you do the import/copy & paste then you can easily just copy it back if there is a problem.

 

[xxsilk109xx]

ok thanks. I think that I will do Feraxks has suggeted. I will make duplicates of both files just in case. Thanks for the tips everyone!

 

[ZenTree]

I've found a lot of people recently actually have meant the autocomplete entries when they're typing in names (aka the nk2 file) rather than the actual contacts.
I saw that wasn't mentioned in your backup list, if you didn't back this up (and if you can't get access to it) then you can rebuild it with a tool from nirsoft (I love that site) called nk2edit.
Just get it to rebuild from the sent items of the backed up pst and copy into the right place.