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Summary: It's important to close a program before backing up so that its data files can be backed up. You can close a program automatically or on a schedule. I have Retrospect on my laptop which has a Maxtor One Touch external drive to do backups. The problem is that if I leave Outlook open the scheduled nightly backup erases the duplicated pst file on the external drive as it cannot copy the open file. Is there some way to run a scheduled job prior to my scheduled backup to close Outlook. I could use "kill" but that is a bit brutal if Outlook happens to be running at the time. I may end up with a corrupt pst file. I had exactly the same problem. I typically leave Outlook and some other programs running. They lock their files while they're running, so those files can't be backed up or copied. I had a relatively good solution, but in researching this question I found an even better one. • We're going to need two things: the ability to schedule a program to run at a specific time, and a program that we can run that will close another program. The first is easy. The "Scheduled Tasks" applet in Control Panel is exactly what we need. The second took a little hunting, but I found a very useful little freeware utility NirCmd. NirCmd is actually a multi-purpose command line tool ... a Swiss Army Knife of command line tools, as it can do many, many things. The 'thing' we'll want it to do is close Outlook. After downloading NirCmd, in a Windows command shell, type the following: nircmd.exe closeprocess outlook.exe If Outlook was running, it should have been closed. The only exception is if Outlook needed to ask you a question on the way out. For example if you were composing a message, any attempt to close Outlook will result in a message "Do you want to save changes?". Outlook will wait patiently for you to respond, and your backup will once again fail. I'm not aware of a truly safe alternative. NirCmd can, in fact, kill the process instead of just closing it, but as you point out, you run a small risk of PST corruption in that case. So, to put this all together, we'll use the Scheduled Task Wizard to create the auto-close task.
You can actually test this new scheduled job by locating it in Control Panel, Scheduled Tasks, right clicking on it, and selecting Run. If Outlook was running, it should close. If you're a command-line junkie like I am, NirCmd is worth a look. It appears to have many useful features. Related: Article 10408 | Posted June 13, 2006 |
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Thanks Leo for finding a solution. I lost my hard disk a few months back and was lucky enough to have remembered to manually close Outlook before the scheduled overnight backup. I had a complete backup that was only a few hours old when the hard disk died. More luck than good management. By using this, it removes one of the elements of luck so thank you again.
Posted by: Neville at June 13, 2006 01:49 PMHello everybody,
I think i have the solution for the outlook problem. I do this for more then a year now on my servers. I used retrospect together with maxtor one touch to, but it's no stable solution for back-up specialy not for servers because my maxtors (two) made some problems regular.
Posted by: Alex Lehaen at June 17, 2006 03:36 AMNow the solution, use SyncBackSe from 2brightspaks, install it on the pc where outlook is instaled and your PST file will be backed up together with your other data . Succes!!http://2brightsparks.com/
Alex.
I think the original question is confused between Outlook Express and Office Outlook.
Outlook Express uses DBX files to store the mail folders - not PST. It comes for free with Internet Explorer 4, and any version of Windows since 98.
Microsoft Office Outlook comes with Microsoft Office which you have to buy. It uses PST files.
Posted by: Eli Coten at June 17, 2006 05:57 PMI wrote a little utility to specifically close Microsoft Outlook so you can back up the PST file. It's freeware and you can download at http://offbe.at/files/default.aspx Note that my utility closes Outlook "nicely" and does not kill the process, so the PST file won't get corrupted.
Posted by: Douglas J. Nakakihara at July 12, 2006 09:23 PMThx so much for this! It helped me out so much! I didn't have trouble with Outlook but with another program, so thx :D
Posted by: Snorri at August 31, 2006 03:12 AMthanks for the info leo, i tried this, cuz i need to close a program during night, but it just kinda block the program, it doesnt close it, i have to close the process manually cuz the program dont respond anymore, do you know any solution to this?
Posted by: linxs at December 31, 2006 06:51 PMI noticed no quotations were put into the command in this example. It did not work for me without quotations. Once I put them in, it ran perfectly. I'm using WXPPro. Other than that, thanks.
Posted by: Lex at April 14, 2007 12:31 PMWhe I saw this article, I thought: great, just what I need. But is doesn't work. I get the following log:
"nircmd.job" (nircmd.exe closeprocess outlook.exe) 20-6-2007 1:12:54 ** ERROR **
Unable to start task.
The specific error is:
0x80070005: Access is denied.
Try using the Task page Browse button to locate the application.
Any idea's? I am Administrator.
Thx
cu, Fr@
Posted by: Fred Polhout at June 19, 2007 04:16 PMHello,
nircmd works perfectly when executed interactively (in batchfile or from commandline) but not when executed in Task Scheduler on my Vista PC
Did I overlook a setting or is Vista a problem ?
Grtz
Posted by: Patrick Versyck at June 21, 2008 06:10 AM