Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of d23
d23

asked on

How Do You Backup Outlook 2000 Address Books?

With Outlook Express and InBox, you can easily locate the Personal Address Books (PAB files) and Personal Folders (PST files) for mail accounts on your hard drive, which makes backing up your mail easy for those moments when you have to re-install Windows.

Ever since I moved to Outlook 2000 though at work, I'm a bit in the dark as to how to do this.  I see Microsoft is still using PST files, but their whole system for address books seems to have become far more complex.  Are they being saved in one file? Separate files? In the registry?

My assumption is that it's still one file, but that it's been given a different name.  Even if I backup the file, how do I tell Outlook 2000 where to look for it after I re-install? Do I even have a choice of where I put it?
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of starl
starl

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Avatar of starl
starl

if you go Tools: Services: Personal Address Book - Properties, the path where the address book is saved will be noted.
if you have an IMO installation, look for a wab instead of a pab
the info from the above article specific to pabs:

Backing Up Personal Address Books
Although Contacts information may be kept either in a Microsoft Exchange Server mailbox or Personal Folder and accessed via the Outlook Address Book, the Personal Address Book creates a file that is stored on your hard drive. In order to assure that this address book is backed up, you must include any files with the .pab extension in your backup process.

To locate your personal Address Book file, follow these steps:
Windows 95/98: Click Start, point to Find, and then click Files or Folders.

Windows 2000/Millennium Edition: Click Start, point to Search, and then click For Files or Folders.

Type *.pab, select My Computer in the Look In list, and then click Find Now to start the search.

Note the location of the .pab file and include it in your backup.

If you need to restore this address book either to the same computer or a different computer, simply add the Personal Address Book service to the profile and point to the .pab file.
 
d23:  What operating system are you running?  Also you state Outlook 2000, but what mode (Internet Mail Only - ie. you have Tools | Accounts or Corp/Workgroup - ie. Tools | Services)?  If Corp/Workgroup, do you connect to a Microsoft Exchange server?  From there it will be real easy to tell you which files will be of most benifit to you.  (By the way, Starl isn't leading you off the track except for the pab/wab thing under Outlook 2000 IMO.  Address Book is a virtual thing that is built from your contacts folder.  Contacts folder is in the PST file.)
thanks for the kind chastisement, neo :-) I was looking thru msdb and was getting a little confused - but one of the articles for IMO and Express did talk about the wab so I thought I'd throw that in - didn't think it would hurt to look..
btw, your last sentence above confuses me. clarification please.
The Outlook Address Book service creates a virtual address book of the data contained in your contacts folder.