I'm hoping somone can help me untangle a mess I've made.

Outlook 2007, Exchange Server 2007.



Here's the story. Computer needed a reformat etc, so I saved all outlook
data (about 1gb, over 200 folders) to a pst file. Did the reformat,
installed Outlook and imported from the pst file whilst connected to my
Exchange server (my big mistake perhaps?) and now I have TWO copies of
absolutely everything.

I've checked in the webmail interface, and there are two copies visible
there too - I guess the server synced with this local copy or something.

So now you can see I'm not sure what I'm doing, and that I've made a mess.
Going through and manually deleting one copy of every message etc is a
non-starter.



Truth is, I don't fully understand the difference between a pst and an ost,
even after reading all about them. I need to be able to work on my email
offline, so I think this means I use a pst file locally - right?



I have tried to reinstall from the pst again (thinking that if this works, I
could delete EVERYTHING and then reinstall the pst again?) but I get a
message saying 'this pst file is already in use in this profile'



Anyway, what I guess I'm asking is this: What is the CORRECT way to import
all my data from the pst file I created two days ago, and get all that data
into a new Exchange profile, without duplicates being created?



Of course, I can no longer simply create a new profile and let it download
the data from the Exchange server, because the server now seems to hold two
copies of everything.



I need to sort this quickly, because mail that has arrived since I did the
reinstallation two days ago is going to be lost if I'm not careful. Please
help me sort out the mess I've made. Thanks for being here.

Jeff