How to migrate an Office 2000 pst file to Outlook 2003
We went to great efforts to back-up a users MS Office Outlook 2000 contacts and folders to .pst files. (OS is XP SP3) That was not a problem. Now we load Office 2003 and attempted an import of the 2000 .pst files and guess what, "NOT SUPPORTED", "CONTACT YOUR ADMIN..." Sure, like Admins have some sort of magic convertor in their back pocket. MS is usually better than most people give them credit for, but not this time! Does anyone know how to make this migration work? We are talking thousands of contacts and hundreds of nicely organized folders. The customer does not want to go back to Office 2000. Thank you!
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Casedog... where do you see Exchange listed anywhere in this question?
Can't imagine them trying to back up a pop3 account for a customer... I could be wrong though...
ASKER
Mr. Casedog,
Why would one not back up a Pop 3 account in MS Office? There is plainly an "Import/Export" command under "File" in the top menu. It plainly works as we have done it hundreds of times. If a customer is going to change hard drives, or move the Contact/Folder/Email Information from one PC to another, why not export it (back it up) as a .pst file and then restore it (import the saved .pst file) onto the new hard drive or new computer? We have done it many, many of times and it has worked every time. Also, we have yet to experience any data loss this way even though others say data is always lost or corrupted. So, what are we missing please? I do not remember seeing a Back-up command in Outlook.
Thank you.
Why would one not back up a Pop 3 account in MS Office? There is plainly an "Import/Export" command under "File" in the top menu. It plainly works as we have done it hundreds of times. If a customer is going to change hard drives, or move the Contact/Folder/Email Information from one PC to another, why not export it (back it up) as a .pst file and then restore it (import the saved .pst file) onto the new hard drive or new computer? We have done it many, many of times and it has worked every time. Also, we have yet to experience any data loss this way even though others say data is always lost or corrupted. So, what are we missing please? I do not remember seeing a Back-up command in Outlook.
Thank you.
SMPC,
If you work the solution I posted above (which I didn't explain too well) it will work for you. All you need to do is start outlook, check on the properties of your inbox what the name of the data file is, then close outlook, browse to the folder that your inbox as reported in, delete the file, copy your 2000 .pst in and name it as your old inbox.
Should Work!
Brian
If you work the solution I posted above (which I didn't explain too well) it will work for you. All you need to do is start outlook, check on the properties of your inbox what the name of the data file is, then close outlook, browse to the folder that your inbox as reported in, delete the file, copy your 2000 .pst in and name it as your old inbox.
Should Work!
Brian
ASKER
Thank you Brian, and all other Experts. We will be back in the office tomorrow and working the suggestions ASAP.
Good evening,
Mike
Good evening,
Mike
ASKER
Gentlemen, You guys will probably kick me out of the club but I made a big mistake. I stated that we could not migrate from Outlook 2000 .pst files to Outlook 2003 .pst files. That was not true. What my tech. loaded on the customer's PC was Outlook XP, version 2002, NOT Outlook 2003. After picking up on that mistake we removed Outlook XP from the drive and reinstalled Outlook 2003. After that the files migrated just fine. We did get one warning about Unicode and the fact that we would lose multilingual support, but that is not a problem for my customer.
So, the answer is that Outlook 2000 .pst files can and do migrate to Outlook 2003 as long as you do not need multilingual support. (there is a workaround for that too if you ever need it).
Please forgive the error and thnak you all for your help. Mike.
So, the answer is that Outlook 2000 .pst files can and do migrate to Outlook 2003 as long as you do not need multilingual support. (there is a workaround for that too if you ever need it).
Please forgive the error and thnak you all for your help. Mike.
ASKER
CLAIRIFICATION to anyone interested in this question: We made a mistake. We loaded Outlook XP version 2002 onto the new HD, not Outlook 2003. It turns out that Outlook 2003 will import and run Outlook 2000 .pst files just fine, except for multilingual support. The REAL problem we were having was importing Outlook 2000 .pst files into Outlook XP version 2002. We could not get that to work.
Thank you!
Thank you!
ASKER
Second - Brian is just trying to help. I beleive he is telling me how to "fake out" Outlook 2003 by using a non-standard way of importing. I think I undrestand what he is saying and will try to do just that.
Thank you both.
Mike