URGENT: Need to find my calendar files!

authorandrew · 20 Jan 2011

Hey all,
Here's the deal. For various reasons I'm reinstalling the OS on my computer, which won't boot. I can access my hard drive through a USB cable to a mac, however. So I'm browsing through my files, and I need to get my outlook data.

Everything I found online has told me I need a .pst file, but I've never exported one of those from Outlook. I can't boot my computer to export the files, but I know they must be somewhere on the computer...it's just where are they? Where are my outlook files on this hard drive, so that I can copy them over to the mac (which I will re-copy once I've reformatted my computer)

This is urgent...I hope to wipe my computer tomorrow morning, but there's no way I'm going through with that until I have my outlook files.

Thanks!
AA

DeVandal · 20 Jan 2011

C:\Users\Specific User\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook

It is a hidden file/folder. Adjust your Mac accordingly if necessary.

authorandrew · 21 Jan 2011

I went to that folder, and it showed up several .pst files. But they were all names of my email accounts I had in outlook. But you're saying my calendar data will be there too?

I can lose the other things in Outlook--it's the calendar that's crucial. But I'll copy that folder over anyways.

AA

mborner · 21 Jan 2011

You can't restore individual files from .pst. You can backup (export) or restore (import) the .pst file but you'll need a working PC with outlook installed to do so. If you can locate the .pst file, not all is lost. Get it backed up right away then work on getting your PC up and running. Once you have a working OS with Outlook installed, replace the current .pst file with the one you backed up. VERY IMPORTANT! Do not configure your email account in Outlook until you restore your .pst file because the first thing Outlook will do when your email account is configured is do a "send/receive", adding messages to your inbox. When you restore your .pst file it will "replace" the old one, deleting those new email messages.

DeVandal · 21 Jan 2011

mborner's advice is valuable, but...

First, each PST file contains a calendar.

Save each PST file in a temporary folder of your choosing.

In a new working version of Outlook, simply import each PST file.

Optionally, you create multiple profiles for Outlook. One method, in Control Panel, select Mail. Follow the on screen instructions. Each profile could contain individual PST files (with calendars).

Or, for each email domain in a single profile, you can set the PST file to NAME_OF_DOMAIN.PST under the DAta Files tab.

authorandrew · 22 Jan 2011

Hey y'all,
I don't use Outlook for email; only calendar, so here's how I figured it out. Two days before my computer went sour, I synced my outlook to my Palm Pilot. So, all I had to do after the computer was wiped was sync back and all my files were there. Thanks for all your help, though! =)

AA