Lost contacts in Outlook 2003

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Guest

My PC is from a closed business that was on an MS exchange server network.
I had taken the PC home, no lnger on the network, and everything in Outlook
had been fine until I started reorganizing email accounts.
When I deleted the server email I lost everything in Outlook (No warnnig I
was about to loose data, incidentally.)
I tried opening the "archive" .pst file but it would not open.
Then I found an older .pst file and opened that.
Outlook now showed old calendar items and old task items, but the 2 contact
files, personal and business, were gone.
The screen reads no data entered.
It is one thing to recreate the upcoming tasks and calendar items, but
loosing thousands of contacts is devastating.
Any thoughts, directions?
 
Were you aware that all your data resides on the server when you use
Exchange? Did your company authorize you to transfer that data to a local
data file, and if so, did you?
 
I assumed the data was on the server, however, it was also residing on this
PC since I had been accessing, and adding, and editing, the data, for some
time since this PC went stand alone. And, yes, having possession of thi data
is authorized since,I hate to say, the closed business was my own.
--
Thanks for your vigilance, Terry


Russ Valentine said:
Were you aware that all your data resides on the server when you use
Exchange? Did your company authorize you to transfer that data to a local
data file, and if so, did you?
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]
Terry S said:
My PC is from a closed business that was on an MS exchange server network.
I had taken the PC home, no lnger on the network, and everything in
Outlook
had been fine until I started reorganizing email accounts.
When I deleted the server email I lost everything in Outlook (No warnnig I
was about to loose data, incidentally.)
I tried opening the "archive" .pst file but it would not open.
Then I found an older .pst file and opened that.
Outlook now showed old calendar items and old task items, but the 2
contact
files, personal and business, were gone.
The screen reads no data entered.
It is one thing to recreate the upcoming tasks and calendar items, but
loosing thousands of contacts is devastating.
Any thoughts, directions?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Terry S said:
I assumed the data was on the server, however, it was also residing
on this PC since I had been accessing, and adding, and editing, the
data, for some time since this PC went stand alone. And, yes, having
possession of thi data is authorized since,I hate to say, the closed
business was my own.
Click to expand...

What you were doing was manipulating the data in the OST, the offline folder
set that acts as a mirror of the Exchange server mailbox. You can operate
offline in Outlook just like you're online because you're using hte data in
the OST. Deleting the Exchange mail account will destroy your ability to
access to OST.

There are commercial tools that can convert your OST to a PST so that you
can access the data.
 
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