Ok, lets start with the Maxtor drive backup, which I had asked a question
about but don't remember seeing an answer.

When you made your backup to that drive, what software did you use to do the
backup?

That leads into the question of backing up your current PST. For
clarification, your Contacts folder is not a seperate entity and doesn't get
backed up seperately. You aren't backing up your Contacts, even if that's
all you care about, you're backing up your PST.

What software are you going to use to make backups? Are you simply going to
drag files to the Maxtor drive? Do you have a backup software that came
with the drive?

Generically speaking, you need to know the path to the PST you are currently
using. So, you right-click on the Personal Folders, select Properties,
click Advanced and copy that file name into Start - Run, delete the file
name (whatever.pst) and hit Ok. That'll open an Explorer window to that
directory. Then, you exit out of Outlook. Hit Control-Shift-Escape and
pull up the Processes tab and make sure outlook.exe is not currently
running. If it is, End Task it (it's likely to be open if there's an add-in
keeping it open, or ActiveSync).

Once that's done, copy the PST file to the directory you want it to
permanently reside in.

Then, go to Control Panel - Mail and configure your profile to use the newly
relocated PST. I couldn't give you steps to do that without knowing what OS
and version of Outlook that you're running.

Fire up Outlook and then try to rename the PST file that is in the
*original* location. If you're able to successfully rename it, then you're
using the newly relocated one and can get rid of the original one.

Now, in order to back up that PST, Outlook can *NOT* be running. So you'd
need to verify it is not running before doing whatever backup you want to
do.

--
f.h.
"Terri" wrote in message
...
I am primarily interested in backing up My Contacts to a folder in My
Documents. As I explained previously, I had to do a complete restore and
somehow lost contacts that were on my external Maxtor drive and I dont
want that to happen again. I can't open from "within" Outlook on the
external drive (or if I can, I don't know how to do that), so I don't want
another bad episode of losing information again...

So I will settle for backing up the contacts to my docs!

Ummm.. Maybe?

Let's back up.

What *exactly* do you want to do?
Do you want to back up *all* PSTs?
Do you want to back up a *certain* PST(s)?

Now I seem to understand - so if I want to makebackups in My Docume4nts,
I have to move the entire folder to there - correct??

The only way to open a PST file is from *within* Outlook. File -
Open - Outlook Data File.

As for where your PST files are, that might be where they are. Do you
have the PST you want to move open in Outlook already?

I see a Backup file (Office Data File) and when I go to it, it says
"You are attemping to open a file of type (Office Data File (.pst).
These files are used by the operating system and by various programs.
Editing or modifying them could damage your system. If you still want
toopen the file, click Open With, otherwise click cancel.

So - are my pst files in there? I cannot see them - should I put the
entire backup in My Documents:? If I cannot open them, then what is
the point because I cannot locate any contacts I have lost!

WHile the location is known, you need to enable viewing hidden
files/folders to actually see the .pst file.

| How do I put a .pst folder in My Documents for constant up to date
| copying? Mine seems to be in a folder called Office Data File
which I
| cannot open but do not see any pst file...can someone kindly help
me
| out here?