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Lennart EricsonFlag for Sweden

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Contacts in MS Outlook .pst file

Have bought a computer from the company I work for. The mailsystem at the company is based on an Exchange server. Not wanting to use the installed MS Office Professional, I bought myself a copy of the Office 2007 Home and small business version. Before doing  uninstallation of the Office Professional version I backed up the .pst files by copying them onto an external harddisk. Then I uninstalled the Office Professional and installed the Home and small business version.
When starting up the newly installed Outlook Home and small business version, I find all my mails but cannot find my Contacts. They seem to have disappeared. I want to recover them, but I don't know haw to do it. Please help.
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apache09
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If the Contacts were saved in a PST or personal Folder
Once outlook is open, need to Add the Personal Folder By

File>Open>Outlook Data File

Navigate to the PST and select it to be opened

Once open, presst CTRL+6 on the keyboard
This should expand all the folders in the nav Pane allowing you to see contact folders in your Mailbox and in the PST

Now at this point, you can eigther copy contacts folder from the PST into your Mailbox / Account

Or you can leave them there, and leave the PST connected

Which ever way you choose, right click on the COntacts Folder
Select Properties

Choose the Outlook Address Book Tab

and Check Show this folder an an email address book
Avatar of Raymond Peng
Have you tried loading the PSTs on another machine that's showing you the contacts?

If you expand by going to the folders List view in Outlook - are you not seeing the contacts?  I would think it's an issue with the PST not having the Contacts copied / archived.  

Can you confirm that you can see contacts in the PST before and is this happening on all PSTs?
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ASKER

apache09, You said "If the Contacts were saved in a PST or personal Folder", let me ask           aren't the contacts, if any, always included in the pst file?
Not nessisarily

If Outlook is connected to Exchange, the contacts would not nessisarily be in a PST unless they were specifically Backed up, Exported, or manually copied into a PST
Thanks for your reply, apache09. I appreciate your assisstance.

So that could be the source of the problem. I know you are a genius on Outlook, so I take the liberty to ask yet another question on this very same topic:
If I had retained the Office Professional version and not deleted it and replaced it with Office home and small business version, do you think I had had the Contacts available also if I was not connected to the Exchange server? This might sound like a somewhat childish question, but it is important to me to get it cleared out.
If the Contacts are not present in the pst file, is there a possibility they are lying in the Exchange server? Or where are they? If they are in the Exchange server, how could I get hold of them? How could I get only the Contacts I consider are mine?
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
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apache09
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apache09, Thanks for your reply. Highly appreciated.

Now, that gives me some hope. There is a .ost file I have saved. I understand .ost files are for offline mode. You mention "use ost2pst to convert the file". Where can I find ost2pst? Is it in MS Outlook 2007 home and small business version?
There are a few out there
SliStick lists most of these

http://www.slipstick.com/problems/pst-repair/convert-an-exchange-offline-file-ost-to-a-personal-file-pst/

However, the mainstream ones are

Advanced Exchange Recovery
http://www.datanumen.com/aexr/problems/ost-to-pst.htm?adv=slipstick7

OST2PST
http://www.ost2pst.org/

Most you can downlaod demos, and see if the OST contains anything you can use before buying

Another one you could look at

http://www.nucleustechnologies.com/exchange-ost-recovery.html?gclid=CMXr547bnq4CFUVspAoda0Vn2w

Good luck
apache09,
Thanks. Sorry for the delay in responding. I am most obliged to you, it worked very well. .