Back up your Outlook Contacts - or all of the data

OUTLOOK
PREVENTING A DATA LOSS - E-MAIL CONTACTS DATA DISASTER!

If you want to be sure and have a back up of your Outlook Contacts - as you do not want to lose the many contacts / friends / co-workers / Business Contacts - Here is a "How To" that walks you through backing them up > and how to open them.

You can open your .PST Files in another Outlook - by saving them anywhere on your computer and going to File > Open > Data File - from within Outlook.

ALSO: You can back up all of your Outlook items including E-Mail and subfolders for later use - the same way as you would back up your Contacts - more information about that at the bottom of this article.

*Note: Outlook 2003, 2007 - is different than Outlook Express, or Windows Mail - those programs do not use .PST files.


Go into your contacts Folder - then choose

File > Import / Export
Choose Export to a file
Choose type as "Personal Folder file" (.pst)

Choose what to Export "Contacts" - in this example.
Choose "include subfolders" if you have contacts files in subfolders of your main contacts folders.

By Default Outlook will create the file with a name of "Back.pst".
You can change that name - but you will have to do it twice - you will see what I mean when you save it - It will say Back - you change the name - then you will see "Back" or "Personal Folder" you can change the name twice and it will have the name of your choice.

When doing the export you can export to whatever location on your Hard Drive you want.
I would export to hard drive - then copy / paste to External Drive - will work better - less chance of corruption.



By Default Outlook 2003 and 2007 will direct your contacts to:
(XP)
C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\

(Vista)
C:\Users\(your user account name)\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook

Once you export the contacts .pst file - you can open it in Outlook to see if everything is there, by going to:
FIle > Open > Outlook Data File - Browse to wherever you exported it.
Click on it and choose open.


*Warning:
If you are exporting the files to an external drive (Hard Drive, or Thumb Drive, Flash Drive - tread carefully opening .pst files located on an external drive - in Outlook.

If you are opening it from the External Drive (Flash Stick) be sure and choose from within Outlook -
Go to Folders View - then Choose to "Close" the Contacts file - that is on your External Drive - otherwise -
Outlook will look for information on that location - and the location is not there - it can cause problems with Outlook.
So - as a general rule - better to open .pst files (contacts, E-Mail or whatever) - from the local Hard Drive.


FOR your OUTLOOK E-MAIL (instead of just the contacts) - you would export the same way as above - but instead of choosing "Contacts" - You would choose your Outlook profile name - usually your First and last name - Once again be sure and choose "include subfolders" or you will not get all of your E-Mail / Data backed up.

You can open the E-Mails / Folder hierarchy - by using File > Open > Outlook Data file as above - to see what you have backed up.
You are ready to copy your .pst file to a flash drive or external hard drive and your data is backed up!


Hopefully that is enough information for you - here are a couple of links that may be helpful relating to .PST files.

http://ask-leo.com/where_is_my_outlo...e_located.html

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/829971