# Lost Contacts in Outlook



## rlawley (Sep 20, 2004)

Hi, 

USING: Windows NT, Outlook 98

Feeling a little desperate and hoping you can help. 

I have recently manually entered about 100 business cards into a subfolder of the Contacts Tab in Outlook 98. When I went back to add some more there are only two contacts left in the folder! 98 are missing!

We back up our system regularly so I thought we could just retrieve the lost files from the back up tapes - but I don't know where to look. I can't find the pathway for the Contacts File (it is not given in the properties box). Before I start to reenter these contacts manually, is there anything you can suggest? I don't even know the file ending I am looking for when I search the system - is it .pab?

Any advice would be very gratefully received. 

With many thanks, 
Rachel


----------



## idtent (Aug 13, 2003)

Depends on your mail.

Are you Exchange extension or pop3 or what? If it is POP3 account the mail is stored locally on your computer in the pst file. Look for *.pst. Maybe you recently archived items??

If it is an exchange setup, these would be stored on the server, or maybe you have offline files. You could look for an ost file. (I believe it is *.ost)


----------



## rlawley (Sep 20, 2004)

Thanks so much for replying. We use an exchange server so I will take a look for .ost files. Do you know whether there a standard place where these are kept? I have started to re-enter the cards manually and my hands are hurting!

R


----------



## idtent (Aug 13, 2003)

Do a search for *.ost in the find files or folders window. Using Exchange, you can still have pop3 or exchange server extensions. You might look under your deleted items if you haven't emptied it yet.


----------

