Ben Feese wrote:

Can you tell me what/where the OST file is? What does it do?

The OST normally resides in %UserProfile%\Local Settings\Application
Data\Microsoft\Outlook, but Outlook itself can tell you exactly where it is
if you ask it. ToolsEmail AccountsNext. Select the Exchange account and
click Change, More Settings, AdvancedOffline Folder Settings and examine
the File field. Note, however, it doesn't apply to your case because you're
not using Exchange.

The OST is similar in nature to a PST. It acts as an image of the contents
of the Exchange mailbox so that 1) you can use Outlook offline and have it
behave exactly as though it were online, with access to the same data
existing in the mailbox as the last time you were online and 2) to provide
faster user interface response when accessing data while online.

I followed the earlier tip to re-point all my rules to the correct
folders to which messages were to be transferred, and it worked.
However I have over a hundred rules and thus it was a very laborious
fix. Surely there must be an easier solution.

Alas, I don't think so. You never did explain how you moved your PST, so it
would be difficult to explain how it happened. A rule contains more
information than you see in the Rules Wizard. References to a folder can
include not only the folder name, but the path to the data store in which it
resides.

And I still am puzzled about why this happened in the first place --
my basic question, and that of earlier posters, is *why do the rules
work manually but not automatically* ?

I have no special internals knowledge, but from observation it appears that
manually running a rule requires less information about the data store
location than does automatic running of that rule. With Outlook using a PST
as the delivery location, the rules exist in the PST. Outlook has data
structures that are supposed to contain the path to that PST. When running
a rule manually, the rule engine itself has no trouble finding the folder
becuase the rule you feed it and the folder it references are in the same
data store. When the rule runs automatically, there appears to be an extra
step needed to locate the rule source so that the rules can be handled by
the rule engine and perhaps because of how you manipulated your PST, the
ability to locate the rule source is broken because the stored path no
longer matches the actual path to the PST.
--
Brian Tillman