Vista Professional to Windows 7 Home Premium

[Reindeer]

I'm hoping I didn't damage myself too badly. I backed up my laptop to an external drive using the Vista Backup utility. Unfortunately, I did not create a pst file for Outlook 2007, I was in a hurry and assumed I could restore everything after the up(down)grade from Vista Professional to Windows Home Premium.

Like a dope, I reinstalled my Office 2007 disk and of course Outlook wants me to start all over. Soooo...I have an external drive with everything on it but don't know how, or if, I can restore any Outlook features so that I can save five years of email.....please help.

 

[sup3rsprt]

go into Outlook and look for an "Import Mail" option in the menus. You should be able to import it even if you didn't create a pst file.

 

[TheSchaft]

I'm hoping I didn't damage myself too badly. I backed up my laptop to an external drive using the Vista Backup utility. Unfortunately, I did not create a pst file for Outlook 2007, I was in a hurry and assumed I could restore everything after the up(down)grade from Vista Professional to Windows Home Premium.

Like a dope, I reinstalled my Office 2007 disk and of course Outlook wants me to start all over. Soooo...I have an external drive with everything on it but don't know how, or if, I can restore any Outlook features so that I can save five years of email.....please help.

I'm not familiar with how Vista Backup works - can you see the ".pst" file on the backup? If you can, then you can point Outlook to the external drive: File - Data File Management - Add.

If you cannot, you may have to re-install Vista from the backup, then save off the ".pst" file, then re-load Windows 7.

 

[Reindeer]

The Vista backup creates a couple hundred folders of zip files...

 

[sup3rsprt]

If you cannot, you may have to re-install Vista from the backup, then save off the ".pst" file, then re-load Windows 7.

It sounds like a pretty good suggestion at this point.

 

[ahriman]

Create an image of your installed Windows 7.
Re-install Vista. Save the ".pst" file on some accessible media.
Restore the image of your Windows 7.
This should be quicker, I think.

I use third-party imaging, like Paragon or Macrium Reflect.
Not sure how the native imaging works for re-install.