Key Steps While Moving Your PST File in Outlook

Later versions of Outlook such as Outlook 2002, 2003 and 2007 permitted storing mailbox data from a Microsoft Exchange Server in personal folder files or PST files. These personal folder files or PST files can contain all your important Outlook data such as mail messages, calendars, attachments, tasks, journals, and so on. You can typically work with PST files in the same way as other standard files. In other words, you can copy, save or move the PST file from one location on your hard disk to another, to a storage device or to the server. This can be of great help in taking efficient back ups of the PST file containing all your important Outlook data and restoring the data when you need to repair pst file that has been damaged. You can thus read and access data in your PST file even if you are not connected to the Microsoft Exchange Server.

Let us first understand how we can identify the main PST file we would be working with. For this, from the main Tools menu, you can go to Options. Now from the Mail Setup tab, you can click on the Data Files button. You will be shown not only the name of the PST file but also the path or the location where it is being stored. For example, D:ExchangeYour_Mailbox.pst refers to the location and Your_Mailbox.pst is the name of the PST file that stores all your Outlook data. It is important that we protect the data contained in this PST file since any damage to the PST file may cause loss of vital Outlook data despite trying to repair pst file.

One of the best ways of ensuring that the data in the PST file stays safe and that you are able to minimize data loss in case of any corruption in the main PST file is to take regular back up copies of this PST file. You can do so by copying the file to another location or a removable storage device such as a zip disk or CD-ROM. Once you have noted down the location of the main PST file, it is easy to make a back up copy of the same.

Connect the storage device to the computer or ensure that there is enough space in the location where you would like to copy the file (PST files can very quickly grow fairly large in size). Now, from the Start menu, go to Windows Explorer and browse to the location where the PST file Your_Mailbox.pst is located. Copy this file to the storage device or to another location on the hard disk.

It is possible that during the copy process, the PST file may become corrupted. Alternative scenarios include corruption in the hard disk containing the back up copy or corruption in the storage device. Even in these situations, you should still be able to repair pst file and recover all your Outlook PST data by simply using powerful tools such as Advanced Outlook Repair from DataNumen. You can restore all the data in the same structure as the original PST data with just a click of a button.