I Need Computer Help with MS Outlook

[savedbygrace]

I need some advice and help. I just got slammed by a misbehaving app's installer and my WinXP box crashed hard.

I've gotten everything back up, except for one vitally important item. When I started MS Outlook, it could not open my Default pst file. That, of course, has my Calendar and tons of saved email messages.

The last backup I did was 9/26/02, so I've only lost 9 days, but if there's a way to restore the more current, but corrupted, pst file, I'd sure like to do it. Everytime I move that pst back to the Default location, Outlook says it cannot access the pst.

The system is a P3-733, 512MB RAM, WinXP Pro, Office XP Pro.

Computer geniuses - what can I do? I'm ready to provide any other info you need to be able to help me. If it's a lost cause, I'll accept that.

Thanks.

[Havoc]

Move the .pst file to another folder - a generic location outside your user 'Profile' path. Open Outlook. Click on 'File' 'Open' 'Personal Folders File'. Browse for the new file. It should create another separate .pst file in Outlook with the old information.

STOP. This will waste your time. This works with OST files, not pst. The ost file holds your profile information as agrarianlady stated - this has nothing to do with your local stored information in the pst. Again, it will work with ost files; but, not pst.

[savedbygrace]

That is a great tip. They're usually on the ball. I'll ping 'em.

[savedbygrace]

Thanks, I've had it bookmarked for a long time now.

[HAL9000]

The fact remains; without Office for the Mac, Apple would have gone under long ago.

Rubbish.

According to this article ("Microsoft cuts Office price on new Macs") a couple of weeks ago, Microsoft "expected to sell 750,000 copies of Office v. X but had sold only 300,000 copies."

Macs include AppleWorks software that reads and writes Microsoft Word and Excel files, so the vast majority of Mac users don't need to shell out extra bucks for MS Office.

[big'ol_freeper]

Actually I just this past week for the first time had a need for a program that is not available on Mac...MS Project. But I run Virtual PC with Windows 2000 on my Powerbook G4 and will purchase it for that.

[savedbygrace]

I'm going offline to try to repair this 369MB pst file. Be back to read more tips and I'll report back then.

[CurlyDave]

If your mail program is so great, why then would Apple go out of business without Microsoft Office?

As far as I can tell the reason is that the corporate world does not know the difference between "cheap", "inexpensive", and "cost effective".

They want me to use a PC at work. Every day when I start it up, the corporate IT department pushes several minutes worth of updates onto it over the ethernet wire connected to it. This keeps it running reasonably well, but woe be to the user who doesn't have a corporate IT department to keep their machine up to date. I have a Mac laptop and usually bring it to work. Plug it in to the ethernet and it just works with no daily updates and no IT support.

If you have PCs you need a substantial IT department, and the IT manager who chose PCs as thge way to go is an important, highly-paid person. If you have Macs your IT department is a lot smaller.

Which system do you think would do better in a home environment?

I have an example from real life. My wife consults and about once a month has to turn out 50-60 page reports. She is a diehard Windows user. Five times in the past four years her windows box (brand names, Sony and HP) has gotten so screwed up on a weekend with a report due Monday that we have just given up, gone down to the local computer store and bought a new system. The payment for a timely report is enough that this is the best way out of the problem. I have always been able to eventually resurect the old system, but it usually takes a week or so of researching what went wrong and painstaking troubleshooting. This has never happened to my Mac.

I know from first hand experience the difference between "cheap" and "cost effective". BTW, since she buys brand name systems, the cost of one of these is about 85-90% of the cost of a comparable Mac.

[BuddhaBoy]

Call it rubbish, but I worked for Apple. I own 3 Macs myself. The point is, Apple has always known that Office provided the Mac with a corporate marketing message.

Without Office, Corporations would have dismissed the Mac as a Graphics and Desktop Publishing machine, and schools would have dismmissed it altogether.

Dont take my word for it, ask anyone at Apple what would happen if Microsoft stopped supporting the Mac. Apple would be out of business within a single year. Apple cannot sell enough Macs to remain viable with only the home market.

[csvset]

Thanks for the link to Annoyances.org.

[for-q-clinton]

I believe you just described the niche market that Apple appeals to. The ignorant computer user. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's funny the more MS makes things user friendly they get beat up by Linux lovers saying they are making it too simple and it doesn't need all that fluff.

So at one end you have Linux which requires a real computer geek who gets off on running command line programs. Windows is in the middle, which they are progressing in both directions. Wit .NET server they are making more and more admin tasks available via command line scripts, but they are also making it more user friendly and recoverable (system restore and error reporting). Then you have the MAC which appeals to the I just want to turn it on and have it let me browse the web. It's a pretty expensive e-machine, but hey it works.

[savedbygrace]

OK, I've gotten almost all of the file back up. I can't know for sure how much has been lost, but I now have messages and Calendar entries from yesterday.

I went to DOS and ran chkdsk /f. It ran the next time I booted up. After that, I ran the Inbox Repair Tool. Then I moved the two pst files so that one is living in a Backup folder, and the formerly corrupted one is living in the correct Default folder.

Thanks to everyone. I'm happy. Much less damage than I thought I'd be stuck with.

FR rocks.

[Bigun]

Go to control panel and click on performance and maintenance.

When that opens look on the left side for system restore and click on that.

Pick a restore point prior the the time of your misfortune with the app installer and click restore.

Sit back and relax. When it gets through with the system restore (be patient) your system will be back as it was at the time you selected before your misfortune.

[agrarianlady]

I wasn't clear enough. I'm talking about a Windows Profile, the entire set of user preferences stored in XP under C:\Documents and Settings\username, etc. It stores cookies, desktop settings, Outlook settings, etc. With NT that local profile used to get corrupted and it would affect Outlook badly. I'd log in as Administrator, back up the set of folders that made up the profile, then have the user log in as himself and thus create a fresh (and uncorrupted) Windows profile for that workstation.

I'm not persuaded that this is savedbygrace's problem - it could be that the .pst file is itself corrupted. But it's the only other thing I can think of that might help repair Outlook if the Inbox repair tool doesn't work.

An OST file I understand is a replica of the contents of an Exchange server-based mailbox.

[jude24]

Wow-- i didnt know OS X ran on a PC!!!! < /sarcasm >

I haighly doubt that savedbygrace can just drop another 2,000 for another new system, even if OS X is that much better.

[jdontom]

Thanks for the Site...

[savedbygrace]

Yes, the pst was corrupted. I think I've gotten most of it back. I really had to work at it, though, because even though it had email messages through 10/4, the Calendar entries were blank. IOW, on the monthly calendars, dates with appointments were bolded, but when I opened a bolded date, the schedule was empty.

So, I had to figure out how to merge that pst with the earlier backup version that only had entries to 9/26.

I'm calling it good now. I'm too tired to go any farther with it.

Good night, Nellie.

[savedbygrace]

BTW, the thing that started this was an app on a CD that I stuck in the drive just to see what was in it. The installation file auto-started and it had no Quit or Close, so I let it go on. The problem with that was that I had Outlook and Quicken open at the time. (I wasn't planning to install anything, so I didn't bother to close them down.)

When the app got crazy, I tried to uninstall it. It didn't have an Uninstall, so I used Windows Add/Remove. The app refused to be uninstalled AT ALL and XP crashed (it's only crashed three or four times in nearly two years.)

When it crashed, it crushed Outlook. I also had some big problems with Quicken, but it recoverd.

[Bigun]

When it crashed, it crushed Outlook. I also had some big problems with Quicken, but it recoverd.

Windows XP ships with a GREAT feature called SYSTEM RESTORE. It works wonders when something like what happened to you occurs. I would highly suggest that you become familiar with this feature of windows XP!

[savedbygrace]

I used to have that turned on, and as I sit here this morning typing this, I can't remember what problems it was causing that made me turn it off. But there was something going on with it.

[Havoc]

I wouldn't recommend use of ms system restore on xp.
The reason would be obvious if you'd ever had a deep virus infestation. Once a virus becomes part of the defualt system backup, you can't get rid of it without wiping the drive - XP will not let you delete restore information.
Just went through one of those about a month ago. I could run viruscan or inoculate or norton and clean the system; but the virus kept coming back because as soon as XP sensed a change in the system files - it would run system restore and put the virus back in place.

Just a helpful tip. Tweaking the settings had zero effect btw.