What to do if you lose your data from Microsoft Outlook

For both office and home users, Microsoft Outlook plays an important role in sending, receiving and managing e-mails, appointments, contacts or to-do list. In other words, Microsoft Outlook is the application that helps you manage your work life. Therefore, if Outlook develops some technical glitches or it is not working well, problems might start off.

In this article you get tips to troubleshoot issues arise when you lose data stored on Microsoft Outlook. Below discussed are tips to help you restore or backup your data on the MS Outlook 2007 and 2010:

Data on your Microsoft Outlook vanishes all of sudde

It is a common problem with Microsoft Outlook users that the data which they have in the form of e-mail messages, contacts and appointments are lost due to some reason. Outlook handles data in its own unique way and therefore the normal course of data backup doesn’t work to save Outlook data. To prevent such unpleasant situations, you need to know how to backup and restore the data on Outlook.

Backup

Backing up Outlook data is not very difficult but you first need to find out the data. To get the data first you need to go in the ‘Account Setting’ dialog box. If you are using Outlook 2007 then you can open it by selecting ‘Tools’ and ‘Account Settings’. Outlook 2010 users can click on the ‘File’ tab and then select the ‘Info’ option in the left side and then click on ‘Account Settings.’

Once you reach the dialog box, you need to click on the ‘Data Files’ tab. Now select your data file (probably Outlook.pst) and then click on the ‘Open Folder’ button (2007) or the ‘Open File Location’ button (2010). Now Windows Explorer will open the folder in which Outlook data is stored.

Now close Outlook and keep the folder open from which you need to copy the contents to a safer location. Make sure that this folder has been included in the schedule of your regular backup.

Restore

You can restore the lost data by following the below mentioned ways:

· First of all you need to reinstall Outlook and enter into the setup wizard. Once you enter the setup an empty data file will be created.

· Once Microsoft Outlook starts running, you have to launch the Import and Export Wizard. To launch the Wizard Outlook 2007 users need to select File >> Import and Export. In Outlook 2010, you have to click the ‘File’ tab and then ‘Open’ option appearing on the left and then choose ‘Import.’

· Now select ‘Import’ from another program or file in the Wizard and then click ‘Next’

· Microsoft Outlook 2007 users need to select Personal Folder File (.pst) whereas Microsoft Outlook 2010 users need to choose Outlook Data File (.pst).

· On the next page of the Wizard, you have to click on the ‘Browse’ button and search the backed-up Outlook folder. The backed-up folder may exist with the name of either Outlook or Outlook.pst.

· After you move on to the next page of the Wizard, select the Personal Folders and also remember to check the subfolders. Finally, you need to click ‘Finish’ to begin importing of the Outlook data that has been backup up.

By following the above discussed steps you can store or retrieve Outlook data.