Lost Outlook Contact Data

  • Thread starter Thread starter Will Niccolls
  • Start date Start date
W

Will Niccolls

While adding an employee's laptop to the SBS2003sp1 domain today, I think I
accidently clicked an incorrect option, and I'm afraid I lost data that was
in Outlook.

The user has Office03 SBE w/ Business contact manager.

When adding the machine to the domain, it obviously checks the Outlook
install, and imports the data from pst file. Well somewhere during that
process I got a screen mentioning the incompatibility with Outlook versions.
I can't say what the menu or error said exactly...I'd like to be more
specific about the message, however, the display flashed and was repainting
windows, and that's when I must have clicked "Yes" to something I shouldn't
have..

Now, there is no data newer than Jan 05, and I'm afraid what has happened is
that I've lost the Businss Contact Manager and also calender data?

Is there some other data file I can look for beside PST files to import into
the Exchange mailbox? I've only found one on the machine.

All is not lost, as I can possibly rollback with sys restore but then I'd
have to suffer through another xp pro upgrade, that's what I'm hoping to
avoid with your advice!
 
open the pst in outlook using file, open, outlook data file and see if the
data is there - it should be.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]
Author, Teach Yourself Outlook 2003 in 24 Hours
Coauthor, OneNote 2003 for Windows (Visual QuickStart Guide)

Need Help with Common Tasks? http://www.outlook-tips.net/beginner/
 
Diane if fact you are correct. The issue with the data wasn't related to
the BCM issue.

While on the phone with the user, we did a search for pst files and only
found two on the C drive. He was offline.

Later, when he was on the LAN domain, I searched for PST and found another
one, it was in My Documents (so that he could back it up easily). I guess
that searching C drive wouldn't find PST in the My Documents folder when he
was offline? I'll have to test that, its just puzzling that we couldn't
find the right PST file initially--we searched several ways and in several
locations.

Anyway, after finding the right PST file we imported and all is well.
Except the BCM still doesn't load.

Will Niccolls


Diane Poremsky said:
open the pst in outlook using file, open, outlook data file and see if the
data is there - it should be.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]
Author, Teach Yourself Outlook 2003 in 24 Hours
Coauthor, OneNote 2003 for Windows (Visual QuickStart Guide)

Need Help with Common Tasks? http://www.outlook-tips.net/beginner/






Will Niccolls said:
While adding an employee's laptop to the SBS2003sp1 domain today, I think
I accidently clicked an incorrect option, and I'm afraid I lost data that
was in Outlook.

The user has Office03 SBE w/ Business contact manager.

When adding the machine to the domain, it obviously checks the Outlook
install, and imports the data from pst file. Well somewhere during that
process I got a screen mentioning the incompatibility with Outlook
versions. I can't say what the menu or error said exactly...I'd like to
be more specific about the message, however, the display flashed and was
repainting windows, and that's when I must have clicked "Yes" to
something I shouldn't have..

Now, there is no data newer than Jan 05, and I'm afraid what has happened
is that I've lost the Businss Contact Manager and also calender data?

Is there some other data file I can look for beside PST files to import
into the Exchange mailbox? I've only found one on the machine.

All is not lost, as I can possibly rollback with sys restore but then I'd
have to suffer through another xp pro upgrade, that's what I'm hoping to
avoid with your advice!
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
In the same boat, here, Will.

All information provided *AS IS* with no implied guarantees. No liability
accepted for turning your toaster oven into an ecosystem or viceversa.

Take a look in \Documents and Settings\...whoevertheuseris...\Local
Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Business Contact Manager .

You may see:
MSBusinessContactManager.mdf and a similarly named
MSBusinessContactManager.ldf .

My *guess* is these hold your user's BCM data.

A good backup would be good before proceeding.

I've seen BCM installs disappear from Outlook before (in situations
unrelated to joining an Exchange server) and a reinstall of the BCM add-in
brought them back. But having a good backup of your BCM data first should be
done.

I'm not aware of any specific support or reference for these files, but MS
may be able to provide a means of getting this data into the form BCM needs
to import it.

I'm of the assumption that Outlook connecting to the SBS server doesn't wipe
the BCM data, it just disconnects BCM from the Outlook profile.

The error you may have received at the beginning of this process (when
joining the Domain):
"Business Contact Manager
The Business Contact Manager database has been removed from this profile,
because this version of Business Contact Manager does not support Microsoft
Exchange Server e-mail accounts. Please use a profile that does contain an
Exchange Server e-mail account. If you don't have such a profile, you can
create a new one. To ???? your profiles, click Start, click Control Panel,
double-clicki User Accounts (Category view only), and then do ???? Mail."
(The ???? were where my screen capture print out was garbled.)
 
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