Summary: Outlook's PST or Personal STore is a single file that holds your email, contacts and more. You can use Outlook itself to find the location of the file.
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I need to backup or make a copy of my mail folders in Outlook,
which as you know are stored in something called a "PST" file. I've looked
everywhere and can't find it. Where does Outlook hide my email? Where does
Outlook keep my PST file?
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PST stands for "Personal STore" - as in your personal mail storage. PST files are really fairly complex databases that contain your mail, your calendar, your contacts and even more, when you use Microsoft Office's Outlook mail program.
The default location has changed a time or two over the years, but mostly because the default location of many things changed between Windows 9x and Windows NT/XP and later. And of course there's always a chance that your PST is stored in some other, non-default, location.
Rather than telling you where the default location is, let's use Outlook itself to tell you the exact path of your PST file.
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I'm using Outlook 2003, but the technique is similar for Outlook XP and Outlook 2000.
The easiest and quickest way I know of is to open the "tree view" of your folders, if you haven't already:
Each top level item, normally called "Personal Folders", or "Outlook Today", represents a separate PST. Right click on it and then select Properties:
Now click on the Advanced button:
And there, right in the middle of everything, is the Filename and the full path to the PST. In this case you'll notice that I'm most definitely using a non-standard location. Yours will most assuredly be different. The default location under Windows XP is typically a location underneath "\Documents And Settings\username", where "username" is your Windows login account name.
Related:
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How do Outlook and Outlook Express relate? Even though they share similar names and do similar things, Outlook and Outlook Express are actually not related to each other at all.
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How should I setup Outlook? In this fifth in a series of articles covering my new computer's setup, we continue by making adjustments to Microsoft Outlook.
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What can I do about Outlook's huge PST? The PST or Personal STorage file for Microsoft Outlook can easily grow to an extreme size. There are some tips for managing its size.
Article C2536 - January 29, 2006
Copy and move HIDDEN ".pst" files in Outlook 2007.
Leo:
Great article and critical to save and transfer computer e-mail files. Only Microsoft would make Outlook 2007 ".pst" files HIDDEN. Please update the above article for Outlook 2007 based on the 2006 vintage RECENT COMMENTS.
An updated article would reduce my 8-hour challenge to a simple 10-minute task for future readers. Writers in the 2006 RECENT COMMENTS disclose the required procedure. Windows Explorer does NOT find hidden ".pst" files.
Posted by: P. J. at October 11, 2009 10:23 PMin our office, how can i erase the PST of my mails in the outlook so that the administrator could not read them?
Posted by: wela at October 12, 2009 2:45 PMmessaging interface has returned an unknown error" I m getting whenever I click Reply all tab.
Any solutions...anyone
Posted by: cheema at October 14, 2009 3:14 PMIf outlook will not open because it says the .pst is corrupt, then how do you find it? I have tried EVRYTHING. I can't see the local settings file.
16-Oct-2009
Posted by: Debra at October 15, 2009 11:47 AM
where is my outlook 2007 pst file located on windows vista?
Posted by: diana at October 18, 2009 3:23 PMHow do I import my outlook archive to be able to read the emails I archived? The file is labeled "archive" and I know where it is. I'm not successful in importing back.
Thank you
Posted by: Bernie at October 29, 2009 10:28 AMIt is not very easy to search in huge PST-Files, and few search tools can do so, actually I only know one which is able to search PST-Files, it is called lookeen... are there others?
Posted by: Lucius at November 2, 2009 1:25 AMWe have a program that automatically finds your Outlook Contacts file and exports the contacts to a Microsoft Accesss database with one click. This is link to page with download of trial copy.http://www.smallbsystems.com/sbs/OutlookUtility.htm
Posted by: Paul Steinberg at November 4, 2009 7:07 AMI used to work with lookout to search thru my uncountable mails. But recently it became pretty slow. I tried Looken, which was mentioned above. For now I could say: fast and easy. I'll see how it will behave in the long run. For those with huge pst-files and email archives I recommend this little tool www.lookeen.net
Posted by: Bob at November 8, 2009 9:42 AMI have Windows 7 beta and a Verizon smart phone that used to sync with two computers. Could you give directions for that as I cannot find the Outlook files as given in this email.
I do not use it for email. I want to find the files for contacts, tasks and calendar.
Are they all on PST files?
Thanks!
Posted by: Karen at November 13, 2009 1:38 PM