Outlook question

Dear People Who Know Stuff,

I use Outlook for all my business email and just had a new PC installed. Yesterday I needed to find something in my archive folders and it seems that they (archives) no longer exist. I'm on a network and all my contacts and stuff showed up so I'm kind of at a loss for where to look for the old stuff. Any help would be appreciated.

Lutherf said:

Dear People Who Know Stuff,

I use Outlook for all my business email and just had a new PC installed. Yesterday I needed to find something in my archive folders and it seems that they (archives) no longer exist. I'm on a network and all my contacts and stuff showed up so I'm kind of at a loss for where to look for the old stuff. Any help would be appreciated.

Click to expand...

Is the drive the archives were located in still on the network?

Lutherf said:

Dear People Who Know Stuff,

I use Outlook for all my business email and just had a new PC installed. Yesterday I needed to find something in my archive folders and it seems that they (archives) no longer exist. I'm on a network and all my contacts and stuff showed up so I'm kind of at a loss for where to look for the old stuff. Any help would be appreciated.

Click to expand...

Archived stuff can be either store locally or on a network share. If you stored them locally then they are going to be on your old pc. if they are on a network share then you just need to link to the share again.

PirateMk1 said:

Is the drive the archives were located in still on the network?

Click to expand...

SocialD said:

Archived stuff can be either store locally or on a network share. If you stored them locally then they are going to be on your old pc. if they are on a network share then you just need to link to the share again.

Click to expand...

I searched for .pst files on the new machine and it comes back blank but I don't know how to access my profile on the server. I can get to the drive where we store all the working data but there isn't a "Users" file there so I figure my profile is somewhere else.

I'm reasonably sure that the recent archive was on the old machine and I can plug that back in. If I do that can I just copy the archive folder to a flash drive and reload it on the new machine?

Lutherf said:

I searched for .pst files on the new machine and it comes back blank but I don't know how to access my profile on the server. I can get to the drive where we store all the working data but there isn't a "Users" file there so I figure my profile is somewhere else.

I'm reasonably sure that the recent archive was on the old machine and I can plug that back in. If I do that can I just copy the archive folder to a flash drive and reload it on the new machine?

Click to expand...

Bingo. Copy it to the machine and route your outlook to look for that archive file (pst file)

Also, I strongly reccomend moving pst file to a network drive and linking to there. I've lost my archive before due to computer failure and can't tell you how many times I've went to look for emails to prove something to someone and couldn't find anything more than 2 years old.

Lutherf said:

I searched for .pst files on the new machine and it comes back blank but I don't know how to access my profile on the server. I can get to the drive where we store all the working data but there isn't a "Users" file there so I figure my profile is somewhere else.

I'm reasonably sure that the recent archive was on the old machine and I can plug that back in. If I do that can I just copy the archive folder to a flash drive and reload it on the new machine?

Click to expand...

You certainly can. you can copy the folder its in or just the file. It will be named with the file extension of .pst. so whatever you named the file. if its just the default its probably My Outlook Data File.pst or something like that. you can copy that file onto the new computer.
THen if you right click on your email account name go to account properties, then Account settings, Then to The Data Files tab, click Add and then browse to wherever you put the .pst file. and add it. that's pretty much it.

Lutherf said:

I searched for .pst files on the new machine and it comes back blank but I don't know how to access my profile on the server. I can get to the drive where we store all the working data but there isn't a "Users" file there so I figure my profile is somewhere else.

I'm reasonably sure that the recent archive was on the old machine and I can plug that back in. If I do that can I just copy the archive folder to a flash drive and reload it on the new machine?

Click to expand...

Yup. Just copy it, attach it, and you are done. Using pst files for archive can be a challenge. If you leave it on your local hard drive, you run the risk of losing it when you lose the drive. If you keep it on a network drive, you run the risk of losing it in the event of a server disk failure. Outlook will keep the pst open, and most backup software will skip open files.

It is a pain, but if you rely on pst files for archive, you should periodically close the file and make a point in time copy. Then copy that file to a network file share.

Myself... I only keep six months worth of email in the active archive pst. All older mail is put into a descriptive pst such as janjune2016.pst and disconnected. Those pst files can get huge if you don't divide them up.

SocialD said:

You certainly can. you can copy the folder its in or just the file. It will be named with the file extension of .pst. so whatever you named the file. if its just the default its probably My Outlook Data File.pst or something like that. you can copy that file onto the new computer.
THen if you right click on your email account name go to account properties, then Account settings, Then to The Data Files tab, click Add and then browse to wherever you put the .pst file. and add it. that's pretty much it.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the help. That's exactly what I needed and I was able to get the data.