Fynx Posted January 20, 2009 Share Posted January 20, 2009 I use Outlook 2003 to connect to an Exchange server. Recently, I have changed my setup and no longer access Exchange, but rather an account through my local ISP. Having done so, I deleted the old Exchange account. What I did not know was that this removes all old Contacts, Emails, etc along with the Exchange account information. All I have now is an outlook.ost file.I have seen where people use ost2pst.exe to convert the file, but since I run Outlook 2003 -- an unsupported version -- it generates an error and fails to convert correctly -- at least the pst file will not open in Outlook. There is also the scanpst.exe method, but this isn't working either due to, I assume, it not being a corrupt inbox, but rather a deleted account.Are there any methods or tools that will allow the recovery of these old emails, accounts, etc from the leftover Exchange outlook.ost file? I would love to find a free tool, but if it has to be a commercial application, I'd appreciate links to them. There appears to be either expensive software or shady looking sites. Any help would be great. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fynx Posted January 21, 2009 Author Share Posted January 21, 2009 Was going blind at the office -- this should be punted to the MS Office category. Apologies to the mods. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nitroshift Posted January 21, 2009 Share Posted January 21, 2009 I would use R-Studio to recover the file(s). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IcemanND Posted January 21, 2009 Share Posted January 21, 2009 MOVEDWhy not just set the Exchange account up again as a secondary account in outlook? Then it will redownload the cache from the server and you can copy it manually to a local PST. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fynx Posted January 21, 2009 Author Share Posted January 21, 2009 Nitroshift: Thanks for the link.IcemanND: I assume you mean, re-connect to the original Exchange server. This isn't possible as that no longer exists. If you mean creating a dummy account (ie. channel9.msdn.com), I tried the linked approach without much success. There was a nag confirmation on each auto-connect for the 127.0.0.1 server address and the "Private" and "Public" folders were inaccessible. I don't recall the exact error (I can check if needed), but it was a generic "can't access, maybe corrupted" message and not a security access issue.Thanks for the responses and the move. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fynx Posted January 21, 2009 Author Share Posted January 21, 2009 Would it be possible to load this .ost file up on any Exchange server? Or would there still be a problem with account related stuff? Currently running a data carver, but since it's been a few days, I'm not too hopeful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fynx Posted January 21, 2009 Author Share Posted January 21, 2009 I wasn't able to pull up a deleted .pst. Let's say I scrap the whole mess, taking the emails as a loss, and re-entering my contact and calendar information. This leads to another issue. I can't re-add any old entries because Outlook says they already exist. But, if I delete the outlook.ost, I think I will lose not only the items I had when I was connecting to the exchange server, but also those added afterwards. Is this correct?While I would like to just recovery the old stuff, I need to look at what's going to get me back on track as quickly as possible. Since I will still have the .ost, I can use recovery tools on it after I get back from a trip. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fynx Posted January 23, 2009 Author Share Posted January 23, 2009 (edited) No comments on using a different Exchange server to recover the .ost or why I can't add new contacts? The latter makes it seem as if something else is wrong and not just a deleted account. Either way, if there's no more input, I'll just spring for a recover suite and (hopefully) go from there. Thanks again for the replies thus far. Edited January 23, 2009 by Fynx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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