Caution Choosing the Discard my customized settings and restore default settings option will set the following back to the state they appeared in when you first installed Outlook:
- The Assistant character selection
- Most-recently-used entries on the File menu will be removed
- The size of the application window for all applications
- Menu and toolbar position and any customizations
- The security level for each application
- View settings within the application, such as the Calendar view in Outlook
Your User Name and Initials will also need to be re-entered when you restart your Outlook applications.
- On the Help menu, click Detect and Repair.
To restore the program shortcuts to the Windows Start menu, make sure the Restore my shortcuts while repairing check box is selected.
- Click Start.
Notes
- This procedure detects and repairs problems such as missing files and registry settings associated with all installed Microsoft Outlook programs. It will not repair personal files, such as spreadsheets or documents.
- If the Detect and Repair command does not fix the problem, you might need to reinstall Microsoft Outlook.
How to make a backup copy of a .pst file
If you are not using Outlook with Microsoft Exchange Server, Outlook stores all of its data in a .pst file. If you want to back up or to export a particular folder, such as a Contacts or a Calendar folder, go to the "How to export .pst data." section .
Use the following steps to back up the whole .pst file:
Quit any messaging programs such as Outlook, Microsoft Exchange, or Microsoft Windows Messaging.
Click Start, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel.
Double-click the Mail icon.
Click the Show Profiles button.
Click the appropriate profile, and then click Properties.
Click the Data Files button.
Click the Personal Folders Service that you want to back up. By default, this service is called Personal Folders. However, this service may have been named something else.
Note You may have more than one Personal Folders service in your profile. If this is true, you must back up each set of .pst files separately.
If there are not any Personal Folders services in your profile and you have been able to store information such as messages, contacts, or appointments in Outlook, your information is most likely being stored in a mailbox on an Exchange Server. If this is true, see the "Data on a Microsoft Exchange Server" section.
Click Settings, and then note the path and file name that is listed.
Note The .pst file contains all data that is stored in the MAPI folders that are used by Outlook in that file. If the file may be too large to place on a floppy disk. If this is true, use a CD-ROM or other portable drive device. You can reduce the size of a .pst file when you click Compact Now.
Close all of the Properties windows.
Make a copy of the file that you noted in step 5 by using Windows Explorer or My Computer.
You may have to restore a .pst file from a removable media, such as a floppy disk drive, a portable drive device, a CD-ROM, a magnetic tape drive, or any other storage media. To do so, copy the backup copy of the file that you just created from the storage media back to the computer hard disk drive.
When you do this, make sure that the Read-Only attribute is cleared. If this attribute is selected, you may receive the following error message:
Outlook Data File Backup
Find out where your Outlook data file is and backup regularly
How can you be sure that your Outlook data is being backed up if you don't know where it is?
I am frequently surprised with the number of users who have no idea where their Outlook data is actually saved on their computers.
Unless you are part of a corporate network using MS Exchange, all your Outlook data is stored in one Personal Folders file. This file has a .pst extension and is saved somewhere on your computer. This one file contains all your Outlook folders, e-mails, contacts, tasks, calendar items, journal entries and notes inside it.
So where is this file on your computer?
The exact location depends on the version of Outlook and Windows you are using but unfortunately it is almost never saved in a place you will remember to backup.
To find out where your Outlook data is:
1. Go to your Inbox and makes sure that the list of folders is displayed
2. Right-click the top-level folder and select Properties
3. Click the Advanced button. The filename will be displayed in the box labeled FileName.
You need to make sure that you regularly backup this file to a CD, DVD or external hard-disk.
For more click Outlook Help
How Create Profile
Follow these steps to create a new e-mail profile in Outlook
| 1. | Click Start, and then click Control Panel. |
| 2. | Click Switch to Classic View, and then double-click Mail. |
| 3. | In the Mail Setup dialog box, click Show Profiles. |
| 4. | On the General tab, click Prompt for a profile to be used, and then click Add. |
| 5. | In the Profile Name box, type a descriptive name for the new e-mail profile, and then click OK. |
| 6. | In the E-mail Accounts dialog box, click Add a new e-mail account, and then click Next. |
| 7. | Click the appropriate server type for your new e-mail account, and then click Next. |
| 8. | Type your account information in the required boxes, and then click Next. |
| 9. | Click Finish, and then click OK. |
Note By default, both the Outlook Address Book and the personal folders (.pst) files are automatically added to each new e-mail profile, except for those e-mail profiles that are created in Microsoft Exchange Server. By default, .pst files are not added to each new e-mail profile in Exchange Server.
How to configure Outlook to start with a specific e-mail profile
Follow these steps to configure Outlook to start with a specific e-mail profile:
| 1. | Click Start, and then click Control Panel. |
| 2. | Click Switch to Classic View, and then double-click Mail. |
| 3. | In the Mail Setup dialog box, click Show Profiles. |
| 4. | On the General tab, click Always use this profile under When starting Microsoft Office Outlook, use this profile. |
| 5. | In the Always use this profile list, click the profile that you want to use, and then click OK. |
How to configure Outlook to prompt you for a specific e-mail profile
Follow these steps to configure Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2003 to prompt you for a specific e-mail profile:
| 1. | Click Start, and then click Control Panel. |
| 2. | Click Switch to Classic View, and then double-click Mail. |
| 3. | In the Mail Setup dialog box, click Show Profiles. |
| 4. | On the General tab, click Prompt for a profile to be used under When starting Microsoft Office Outlook, use this profile. |
| 5. | Click OK. |
How to Configure Outlook
Accessing other people's calendars
Outlook has supported sharing your appointment availability with other users since Microsoft Outlook 98 by using the Internet Free/Busy feature. By using the Web site storage space that many Internet service providers (ISPs) bundle with the majority of dial-up and high-speed packages, you can use your Web site as a publicly accessible location to store this data.
Important: For users of the Microsoft Office Internet Free/Busy (OIFB) feature that uses servers from Microsoft to provide this information: This service is scheduled to be deactivated on October 15, 2004. If you are an existing OIFB user, you can continue to use the service, but no new users will be accepted. Furthermore, if you install Microsoft Office 2003 Service Pack 1, the OIFB features will be removed. See Office Internet free/busy features are removed when you install Outlook 2003 Service Pack 1.
Publishing free/busy information
Once you've obtained access to your Web server, configuring Free/Busy is a snap. On the Tools menu, click Options. Click the Preferences tab, and then click Calendar Options. In the Calendar Options dialog box, click Free/Busy Options, which brings you to the Free/Busy Options dialog box (see Figure 1). All you have to do to get started is to select the Publish at my location check box. This is where you need to enter the URL to your Web site address (or a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server that provides access to your Web site folders), which can can include FTP or HTTP URLs or file URLs:
ftp://My server/Freebusy/My name.vfb
http://My server/Freebusy/My name.vfb
file://\\Computer name\Freebusy\My name.vfb
If you use an FTP server and it does not have anonymous access enabled, you must provide a user name and password in the following format:
ftp://User:Password@ftp.domain.com/Users folder/Freebusy/My name.vfb
The directory structure doesn't have to be the same as listed above, as you can use any number of nested folders that are named whatever you desire, or you can store the .vfb files in the root directory. Just make sure that the paths on the server matches the publish location in Outlook.
Alternately, if you have a Microsoft Windows® or a Peer-To-Peer network, you can store the free/busy information on another computer that you have access to (like a file server or a shared folder) instead of an FTP or Web server. This can be useful in small business environments when you frequently need to check the availability of a coworker and you can't or don't want to store free/busy information on the Internet. However, keep in mind that free/busy data stored on your network will not be accessible to people over the Internet.
Scheduling meetings with Internet Free/Busy
Now that your availability information is published, other people can determine whether you are free or busy when creating meeting requests within Outlook. The primary mechanism for this is through the Scheduling tab of a meeting request. For each attendee, Outlook searches a global location or a contact-specific location to determine the availability of the people who are being invited to the meeting.
The global location is typed in the Search location box in the Free/Busy Options dialog box. This is where users who need to access other people's availability have to enter a similar address to the publish location:
ftp://%SERVER%/Freebusy/%NAME%.vfb
http://%SERVER%/Freebusy/%NAME%.vfb
file://\\Computer name\Freebusy\%NAME%.vfb
The %SERVER% and %NAME% variables are important — they allow Outlook to determine where a person's free/busy information might be stored by the format of their e-mail address.
Real-world example
To illustrate an end-to-end free/busy solution, let's examine a fictional company called Adventure Works. This company has three employees who have e-mail accounts through Adventure-works.com, which also hosts the company's domain name (adventure-works.com) for the corporate Web site and allows anonymous FTP access for sharing files over the Internet in the "pub" directory. As the company owner, you want all of your employees to share their free/busy information.
On each employee's computer, you have to configure the following information for the Publish at my location box in the Free/Busy Options dialog box:
ftp://adventure-works.com/pub/Freebusy/Boss.vbf (your computer)
ftp://adventure-works.com/pub/Freebusy/Employee1.vbf (Employee1's computer)
ftp://adventure-works.com/pub/Freebusy/Employee2.vbf (Employee2's computer)
To enable searching of the published information, you have to enter this in the Search location box on every computer:
ftp://%SERVER%/pub/Freebusy/%NAME%.vbf
The default time interval for automatically publishing free/busy information is 15 minutes, but if you want to manually publish the information after entering the publish location, just point to Send/Receive on the Tools menu, and then click Free/Busy
Information.
Now let's suppose that you have an important relationship with Joe the sales rep at one of your vendors, and you wish to share your free/busy information with him because you frequently have meetings with each other. For security reasons, you don't want him to have publishing access to your company's Web site, so he won't be able to store his information there. Joe's company also manages their free/busy information on their own Web server. To get at Joe's free/busy data, open his Outlook contact item and enter the location of his free/busy .vbf file that he has provided you with in the Address field under Internet Free-Busy on the Details tab of the Contact form. When you go to create a meeting request and enter someone@example.com, Outlook sees this address as belonging to an Outlook contact and retrieves the location of Joe's .vbf file from the contact item. Outlook then queries this address on the Internet to retrieve Joe's free/busy information and updates the time block for the calendar view with his published availability.
For the employees in your company, the process is similar. However, since everybody has a global search location defined, Outlook doesn't have to look up the contact information. For example, if you create a meeting request and add employee1@adventure-works.com, Outlook parses the values from the address to look for ftp://adventure-works.com/pub/Freebusy/Employee1.vbf as per the substitution rules you created earlier.
Publishing full calendar information
One limitation of using the Internet Free/Busy service is that you cannot see the full details of an individual's appointment, nor can you effectively see more than two weeks of free/busy time at a glance within the meeting request. Outlook has a nifty feature that can create a Web page for you automatically which contains a full calendar view for the dates you specify, along with the full appointment details.
To publish your calendar, click Save as Web Page on the File menu while in your Calendar view. In the dialog box, you can specify the date range and a background graphic, amongst other things. After you choose a file location, your Calendar Web page is good to go! Just publish it to your ISP's Web server or a shared location on your network, and your schedule is readily available for viewing by anyone with access. However, this information is read-only to others and does not get automatically updated when your appointments change. You'll need to republish your calendar periodically whenever you make modifications.
Note Publishing your calendar requires that you have the Web Publishing Wizard installed. You can download the wizard from the Microsoft Download Center.
For more information, see Publishing Outlook Calendars on the Internet or an Intranet.
Sharing contact and appointment items
One quick and easy way to share individual contacts or appointments is to simply forward them via e-mail as attachments to people who need them. Outlook makes this easy to do within the Contact and Appointment forms via the Actions menu — simply click Forward. This quickly creates a new e-mail with the selected/open item included as an .msg attachment. Be careful though — you must make sure that Outlook is properly configured to send these attachments, or the recipient will receive the attachment as a blank message. For starters, make sure that the message format is set to Rich Text, and that Outlook does not convert Rich Text messages to HTML. (On the Tools menu, click Options. On the Mail Format tab, click Internet Format. Under Outlook Rich Text options, click Send using Outlook Rich Text format in the list.) Lastly, if the person to whom you are sending is included in your Contacts folder, double-click their e-mail address in their contact to verify that Rich Text is chosen as the e-mail format.
A far better and easier option is to save contacts as vCard files (.vcf) and appointments as vCalendar (.vcs) or iCalendar (.ics) files. These formats are widely used by many e-mail and PIM (Personal Information Manager) applications other than Outlook and should be used instead of sending .msg files, especially if you are unsure what e-mail program the person you are sharing your information with is using. Outlook also includes the Forward as iCalendar and Forward as vCard commands on the Action menu to make it easy to send these files. For more information on the vCard, vCalendar, and iCalendar specifications, see vCard and vCalendar on the Internet Mail Consortium Web site.
If you need to share a large number of contact or appointment items with other Outlook users, the best distribution mechanism is to export the contents of your Contacts or Calendar folder to a Personal Folders File (.pst). The Import and Export option on the File menu allows you to export all or a filtered subset of folder information, which can then be easily imported using the same wizard on another user's computer. Compressing this file with a utility like WinZip is a good idea if you need to e-mail the .pst file, as they can become quite large. You will also have to exit Outlook before you work with this file to release an exclusive lock that prevents it from being accessed.
Sharing e-mail messages
Don't worry — I'm not going to recommend you manually forward each and every e-mail message that you want to share! Large amounts of e-mails can be exported using the Import and Export Wizard just like the approach above described for contact and appointment items. However, it is strictly a manual process and not the most realistic in many scenarios.
The most common situation that demands a method to share e-mails effectively is when more than one person needs to monitor an e-mail address. The best way to do this is to give these people access to the same e-mail account, supposing that you are okay with the obvious security issues! Then it is quite easy to set up a mail-sharing solution, depending on whether your e-mail account uses Post Office Protocol (POP) or Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP).
POP accounts are the most widely used. One key feature of this type of account is the ability to leave messages on the server after you download them. Otherwise, if you have a mailbox somewhere with existing e-mail messages that more than one person needs to read, as soon as one person connects to the mailbox, by default these messages are removed from your ISP's mail server and stored in the Outlook .pst file. The next time somebody else connects to the mailbox, the messages are of course gone — so make sure you turn this on before you do a send/receive to ensure that existing messages will remain for other users to download.
When the time comes for you to empty the remote mailbox, simply have one person temporarily disable this setting, download the entire contents with the next send/receive, and re-enable. Furthermore, there are other settings to remove messages from the server after a certain time period, or to delete the messages from the remote server when Outlook essentially detects two deletions of an e-mail message — the first deletion, and again when it is deleted in the Deleted Items folder. These settings are controlled via the Tools menu, E-mail Accounts command. On the first page of the E-mail Accounts Wizard, click View or change existing e-mail accounts. Click Change on the next page, click More Settings, and then click the Advanced tab (see Figure 2).
IMAP accounts are a little different. Unlike POP accounts, where all e-mails can only be accessed after they have been downloaded locally, IMAP messages are always stored on the server. If you share your IMAP account with other people, make sure that everybody is aware of the different method for deleting messages. When you delete a message, it's simply marked as deleted by displaying it with a strikethrough font through the message in the folder view. The message actually remains in a deleted but accessible state until you click Purge Deleted Messages on the Edit menu from the folder view, and these messages are then permanently removed.
Another benefit of using IMAP over POP accounts is that you can simply download the message headers, without the full body content, and choose which ones you want to mark for downloading. Any messages that are fully downloaded are then available for viewing offline. Furthermore, IMAP keeps your sanity intact when it comes to "read mail" management. When you download POP mail from multiple locations, there is no mechanism to track which mail you may have already read from a previous location when you download them again later on another Outlook client. But IMAP knows which messages have been read!
How to "really" share all of your Outlook information
Although the above approaches are free and easy to implement, there are some limitations to be aware of. Sharing free/busy information doesn't provide detailed access to appointment data, and exported Web calendars are read-only. Distributing contact and appointment items via e-mail also doesn't solve the synchronization problem of having multiple copies of that information stored in various locations. Also, with POP and IMAP accounts, you can only access e-mail messages on the remote mailbox — no contact, appointment, task, or note items can be stored on the server (except as attachments to e-mail messages, of course).