Business Tips Guides

MS Outlook allows you an efficiently organized means of managing the important components and aspects of your everyday business life–your email, contacts, calendar appointments and meetings, tasks, notes, and journals and the counless techniques for keeping connected with your prospects and clients. But what happens when you are suddenly faced with an emergency computer situation and you know you need to create a backup of your Outlook data–and you need it, like, right NOW.

MS Outlook keeps all that important information in just one file–outlook.pst–a file just like a Word .doc file or an Excel .xls file. (There are some miscellaneous items NOT there like your master category list (2003), custom views, modified toolbars, and such).

And if you are backing this up on a regular basis, my hat’s off to you…your 3 in 100. But even if you ARE backing up regularly, there are unfortunate times when an up-to-the-minute FAST backup is required.

So here then is a sure-fire method to safely and completely back up the lifeblood of your business life. By the way, you’ll want to save this information someplace safe (cut and paste into an Outlook Note) should you ever need this information).

The essence of this technique is quite simple: we are simply go to the folder where the current outlook pst file is kept and literally Cut and Paste everything.

There is a small trick to this though; because you can’t copy your Outlook file while Outlook is open, this little procedure will help you quickly find the right folder and the make it so that you CAN copy it.

For Outlook 2003:

1) From the menu, left-click on Files, Data File Management.
2) Highlight the Personal Files folder (Mail Delivery)
3) Click on Open Folder icon–this will open a Windows Explorer session and highlight the selected outlook.pst (Note: don’t worry if the file name is not outlook.pst, there are countless reasons why the names may not match)
4) Use your Alt-Tab key to go back to Outlook. Close the Account Settings box
5) Close Outlook.
6) Alt-tab back to the Windows Explorer.
7) Press Ctrl-C to copy the file. Press Ctrl-V to make a copy.

For Outlook 2007:

1) From the menu, left-click on Files, Data File Management.
2) Click on the Data Files tab
3) Highlight the Personal Files folder (Default)
4) Click on Open Folder icon–this will open a Windows Explorer session and highlight the selected outlook.pst (Note: don’t worry if the file name is not outlook.pst, there are countless reasons why the names may not match)
5) Use your Alt-Tab key to go back to Outlook. Close the Account Settings box
6) Close Outlook.
7) Alt-tab back to the Windows Explorer.
Press Ctrl-C to copy the file. Press Ctrl-V to make a copy.

If you find that the outlook.pst file is STILL locked (you are getting an error “The process cannot access the file…”), then some other process has the file open and therefore locked–like your Blackberry Manager or your Palm HotSync program. Exit those and then try again.

Once your outlook.pst file is backed up you can move it somewhere else (CD, DVD, pen drive, another hard drive, or even the network). Just make sure you determine the size before you decide where to move it to.

Here are 2 additional and noteworthy points of interest:

1) Because the file is safely tucked away under Documents and Settings, it will be backed up everytime you perform a standard backup–which should include (normally does) the Documents and Settings folder.

2) When you are moving to a new computer, NEVER copy the active outlook.pst file to the new computer over the original (and active) file–some information is maintained in the registry and you could end up with 2 Personal Folders that are reflections of each other. Always IMPORT the old pst into your new PC or laptop.

A final note: If you are not backing up on a REGULAR BASIS using either the standard windows backup facility (Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Backup) or some 3rd party software program, you are sitting on a time bomb. Take the important steps TODAY to protect the serious investment you have made into your business…and sleep easier tonight.

Paul Wagner, The Software Magician, a coach, consultant, and author on Contact Management, teaches business professionals and entrepreneurs how to overcome technical overwhelm and get peace of mind by working faster, smarter, and more easily with their MS Outlook. www.softwaremagician.com