With the amount of important information that people keep in their outlook folders these days it’s of paramount importance that all that data is backed up, however how do you actually backup all those contacts, e-mails, calendar entries and tasks etc?
The answer to this problem is actually much easier than most people would at first think as Outlook stores all it’s information in something known as a ‘Personal Folders File’
It should be mentioned at this point that these instructions are for use on a single user PC which is not connected to an Exchange server – if you are in a multi-user networked environment your system administrator should be taking care of all your backup worries.
Finding your Personal Folders file (If you don’t already know where it is!)
All Personal Folders files are denoted with the file extension .pst, so it’s fairly easy to find your .pst file by using the Windows search facility, just remember to select the option to include hidden and system files otherwise your .pst file may not be located correctly.
Once located, backing up this file is just a matter of copying the file to another storage medium such as another hard drive, CD/DVD, USB memory stick device, memory card etc.
To restore an old .pst file, just copy it b ack to the location that it originally came from and you will have all your data restored. Note – If you copied your file to a CD or DVD, then you will probably have to remove the ‘Read Only’ status of the file once you copy it to the hard drive.