Outlook - Email retrieval

[Darisha]

Hi Everyone,



Recently my cheap water cooling system leaked and fried my motherboard as well as my tv card. I have tested the rest of my components and they are working, I have built my machine with a new motherboard. When I switch my machine on it doesn't boot into windows, I have gone through the Windows Repair Utility and it was unsuccessful.

I now know that I have to do a clean install. I have managed to add that hard drive to my other computer and get some files off. I am having some issues with my email though.

I have copied files in the following locations:

> USER\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook
> USER\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Outlook

Since the emails are of most importance, please tell me if Outlook files & settings & all other outlook info, are in any other location, other then the above mentioned.

I have also tried locating the folder LOCAL SETTINGS and all I found, was a shortcut which, when I click to open it tells me that the folder and its contents are no longer at that location. I then tried searching for the folder LOCAL SETTINGS and 4 shortcuts came back and no folders.

- I have changed the setting to be able to see hidden files.
- OS is Windows 7 Pro

If anyone has a lot of experience with this sort of stuff, please tell me if copying files from the above mentioned locations is enough to get all my emails back after the clean install or do are there more locations that I should be looking into.

Thank you!!

[SpiderTech]

Darisha,

To aid you in this recovery process, some additional details are required.

1. Did you have your E-mails backed up to an archived .PST file?
2. When you copied over the above data, does it contain .PST files?
3. When you configured your Outlook, what form of account to you have established? Was it a standard POP, IMAP or an exchange account?

Another location windows likes keeping data files or archived email files(.PST) is Local DISC > Users > ( User name) > Documents > Outlook files.

Keep us posted.

[Darisha]

Thanks for your advice, but the problem was sorted out.

Those two folder that I copied over were enough .... all of my emails were there.

After reinstalling Outlook I started it but before starting it, I placed the folder in their respective places, then a new pst got created, then I closed Outlook, renamed Outlook1 to Outlook.old and then renamed the original, copied Outlook file to Outlook1.

Everything worked 100%

Thanks again!

[SpiderTech]

Glad everything worked in the end.

[givegethelp]

Hi Darisha and SpiderTech,

I recently did a clean install of Windows 7 on my laptop. I went to "import" my emails from the back up file, but it only imports my calendar, contacts, and notes. No emails or folders. I can't even find them on my backup location (external hard drive). I saw where you said about relocating the AppData\local folders, but I'm not sure what you mean. Can you offer any help?

Thanks in advance.

[SpiderTech]

If you re-installed or did a clean instal of your operating system, there is a good bet your old data could be lost.

Normally, your Outlook data files will be in the following places:

Local Disk\users\(User name)\My Documents\Outlook Files
Local Disk\USER\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook

If the .PST you have now does not contain any data, try just simply opening it with your Outlook program.

With Outlook 2010 you an hit File > open Outlook data file and navigate to the location of the file.

Hope this helps.

[givegethelp]

Hi Spider Tech,

Thanks for your advice. Yes, I've tried to open it from any .pst path I could find. I'm pretty sure it's wiped clean from the laptop, but I have the backup that I did just before the clean install, in addition to an older backup that the comp repair guy did for me when he replaced my hard drive after a crash. I was hoping to be able to find it on them, but have had no luck.

I don't understand why these files are any different than any other document. Why such the big deal?