Folders missing from Outlook 2000, upgrading from WinME to WinXP

  • Thread starter Thread starter Russ Holsclaw
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Russ Holsclaw

On my wife's computer, she had a substantial number of email
folders in Outlook 2000. We just upgraded her from Windows ME to
Windows XP and all of the folders she had with names starting
with "*" or "~" are now missing. She used this naming convention
for folders she wanted to appear near the top of the alphabetic
list. Naturally, these were the emails she most wanted to keep
and now they're gone!

During the upgrade, Outlook had to be re-installed, presumably
because there were differences between Outlook 2000 for Win 9x
systems and those for windows NT systems like XP.

I thought that perhaps the "NT/XP" version might have disallowed
folder names starting with "*" or "~", but it seems to allow new
ones to be created... but somehow the preexisting ones didn't
survive the upgrade.

Actually, she isn't certain that there aren't some other missing
folders, too, but she's definitely sure about the ones with
special-character name prefixes.

Why did this happen, and is there any way of recovering the data?
 
A followup to my earlier post. We found that the data listed as
"outlook today" was actually an old .pst file from somewhere, and
the .pst file that had been the current "Outlook Today" folder
was now named "Outlook(1).pst" That file was moved to the new
place where XP puts application data, but it had apparently been
renamed and not included as a folder to display. However, we
were able to open it as a "personal folders" file.

So, I guess now the question is: how do we get that .pst file to
be recognized as the "real" one? Simply rename the files to swap
identities (with outlook closed, I presume), or what?
 
Right-click the root folder of the set of Personal Folders you want to make
the default, then choose Properties. On that first tab, you should see a
box that says "Deliver POP mail to this personal folders file". Check that
box, then click OK and restart Outlook. The desired .PST should now be the
default (its root folder should be "Outlook Today"). If you don't need
anything in the other file, you can close it by right-clicking its root
folder and selecting Close. It will still be on your hard drive -- you can
delete it from there if you want (just be careful which .PST you delete).

Note that the above instructions apply to Internet Mail Only mode, which I
assume you're using. You can check this by clicking Help | About Microsoft
Outlook and looking at the second line of text. If it says
"Corporate/Workgroup" instead, I'll need to give you different instructions.

--
Jocelyn Fiorello
MVP - Outlook

*** Replies sent to my e-mail address will probably not be answered --
please reply only to the newsgroup to preserve the message thread. ***


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