Lost Address Book - Help!

[SeekHer]

I had two hard drives (160GB each) in my tower case (C: & D:) and knowing that I would have to replace my C: hard drive (making strange sounds) I backed up everything important to my D: drive, just not games and a bunch of Utility Programs that was easier to reinstall from the Net...With prices so low, I opted to get a new 2,7 ghz dual core mother board with 3 GB RAM and do a proper rebuild (including a 1 GB video card)...

Because the new SETA mother boards won't allow two hard drives on them (yes I could have installed a controller but that was almost the cost of the large drive), I opted for a much larger hard drive (500GB) and had them copy everything from my two drives over to the new larger one which they partitioned for me into two drives with everything stored on D:that I had from both drives (including games etc.)...I didn't know that the new boards don't come with printer ports anymore, did you? I also didn't know that the sound card are now built in but mine doesn't seem to want to work, but that will be another post!

I reinstalled Windows (XP Home w/SP2) and went to find the address book and can't find it in Windows, Outlook Express, Outlook...I tried importing it but don't know where to find it in the directory and I did a search for the tag (.ad?) and couldn't find it...

Where, oh where, could my little address book be?...I'm trying to make light of this but my whole life is tied up in that book--all my friends and family not to mention business contacts and clients...

I thought I'd be prudent and back everything up but how was I to know that there isn't a file in the Windows etc. tree that says address book...

[center]HELP![/center]

EDIT
I also can't find the saved mail from the local folders in Outlook Express where I've kept all the correspondence in various files...

[mekender]

i dont use outlook but there is a ".pst" file that has all of the info in it, or it should...

before you try to import it, make a copy of it in another folder...

just do a search for ".pst" files

[SeekHer]

Sorry, no .pst files to be found even in the new one!

[Erik]

*.pst is the Outlook archive files. The mailfile itself is called .ost, mine is "outlook.ost".

It's usually stored under your user in "Documents and Settings", in one of the hidden directories there, on my pc it's in "C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook"

If you didn't back it up the first time, you can buy a a USB cradle where you can stick the old harddrive, and look through the old harddrive that way. It doesn't cost much, and it's a good thing to have around.

Edit to add: Your personal addressbook should be called *.PAB. Not sure where it's stored, but the directory above is probably a good place to start looking.

[SeekHer]

Erik, Tak

Sorry, there aren't any of those files either...thing is they aren't in the new version installed as well...

[Dedicated_Dad]

Try making sure you've got "show hidden/system files" turned on, and that you've enabled those options in your search.

HTH...

DD

[Alcibiades]

Try *.wab when searching. There may also be a file ending in .wab~ which may be the backup.

[SeekHer]

Try making sure you've got "show hidden/system files" turned on, and that you've enabled those options in your search.

HTH...

DD

Thanks, but they're always turned on, one of the first things I did after installing (again) Windows, set up my folders...

[Dedicated_Dad]

Try making sure you've got "show hidden/system files" turned on, and that you've enabled those options in your search.

HTH...

DD

Thanks, but they're always turned on, one of the first things I did after installing (again) Windows, set up my folders...

I've seen this happen a lot -- folks forget to click the "apply to all folders" box...

If you've created a new ("temp") address book and still can't find the file, this tells me that something is wrong with the search -- obviously the file exists, so....??

DD

[SeekHer]

Well, I finally found a .pst file in the old directory but now I'm having trouble importing it into the new one, copy and paste works but then Outlook won't read it...

Went into local settings\application data\Microsoft\Outlook (which I created) as that was the folder it was in on the old director...