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Restoring an Outlook backup to a new (re-built) machine.

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I'd backed-up various files and I done a specific email (Outlook) backup using TU 2011 on my PC. After rebuilding it, I've installed Office again, and I've opened Outlook without creating any email accounts.

I then restored the Outlook back-up (after upgrading to a Windows *-compatible TI 2013), but when I open Outlook again, it hasn't recreated my profile as before.

Clearly there is some intermediate step(s) I need to take. Given I have a new Office installation, and an Outlook backup, how should I proceed?

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I think you will need to point to the recovered PST file rather than the new one the installation of Outlook will have made.

Colin, I can certain swap PSTs which will give me access to my emails, but the whole point of bothering with the a True Image Outlook backup is that I want to restore all me email account settings and other outlook settings.

I assumed that TI could do this, otherwise what is the point of this as a specific feature?

Thanks

Chris

I think the problem is that a new installation of Outlook changes the PST identifier, so it doesn't auto recognise a restored default PST file. I suspect that if it had its' own profile name or possibly recovered before Outlook, then a new instance of Outlook would see it.

If the original instance of Outlook was there and for example you had deleted the PST file, I believe Outlook would then have recognised the recovered PST file.

However, I'm not sure as at home I don't use Outlook, so can't be 100 percent sure. Has 2013 recovered the Outlook PST file to the correct default location?

Was your original file in the default location or had you moved it to a specific folder? If you had selected your own folder, then a new install of Outlook would have no idea where to look. I believe True Image only backs up the database not the registry settings in the Outlook script. I'm not on my laptop which has 2013 installed so can't check what the Outlook script file contains. Obviously a disk or partition image does contain the settings, but that type of image wasn't the method required by you.

Chris,

Other users have had the same issues with email backup and restore on a newly installed OS, profile. I guess that because restoring the accounts settings require some registry editing in the right user account, this process might fail there.

I hope that TI would be a solution for the perennial problem I have of transferring my Outlook configuration when moving/rebuilding PCs, but it is no silver bullet.

This time, I've ended up manually recreating all my accounts, and recovering the emails themselves from the backed-up PST. Next time, I think I'll have a go at scripting the collection of files and registry settings myself.

Not to diss TI too much - it has 'saved my bacon' a couple of times already with other items that I'd failed to specifically archive in the rebuild.