Hi, I have a silly situation. I have a non-profit that I occasionally donate time to.  One of their computers got hit by a surge and the motherboard was fried, so I yanked the hard disk, backed everything up to my NAS and sent the unit to the manufacturer for repair. The manufacture replaced the entire unit including the hard drive, so I copied all their data over and setup their programs again.  One user was setup as POP3 and it was easy to import their PST file back into the newly created account. 

The second user had setup their account as IMAP, so I just set their account back up and expected all data to be accessible from the server. However, the user is complaining that they had an extensive number of contacts that are now gone.  I searched for .PAB, .WAB, and .OAB address book files without success.  I then downloaded an OST file viewer and cracked open her OST file.  Indeed there are contacts in her OST file that don't exist on the server.  What the heck???  Shouldn't the non-server data have been stored in an external file such as a .PAB file?  For just $69.99, the little viewer utility tells me I can "recover" OST items, but this non-profit runs on a tight budget and the $70 could really be used better elsewhere.

Can anyone tell me a free method to extract that data from the OST file? I already tried the following:

- Renamed the new OST file and replaced it with the old one. The system basically said this OST file is not the right one and wouldn't let me open it.
- Import the OST by renaming it's extension. FAIL.
- Looked for utilities to export, convert, or view the OST file content. The one viewer that worked to show me the contacts were there hid the actual information such as the recipient's e-mail address. :(

As you answer, please remember that the file was created by connecting to an IMAP account, not an exchange account. There seems to be no server side data for the contacts.

Thanks,

Jeff

As you answer, please remember that the file was created by connecting to an IMAP account, not an exchange account. There seems to be no server side data for the contacts.

Unlike prior Outlook versions, OL'2013 maintains all data related to an IMAP account in a single .OST file with non-email related folders have "This computer only" included in the description. Not sure why someone thought that was a good approach since if the data in the "This computer folders" is not backed up separately to a PST file - there is no way to recover the data from the OST file if the original email account configuration is no longer accessible.

Not aware of any "free" way to recover the data in the .ost file.

Wow. I see your MVP and your 5,900 points, yet I'm hoping you are wrong. :) Sadly, I kind of came to the same conclusion after some additional research but I'm hoping someone comes up with a little known open software product that will allow me to recover the data without having to spend this non-profit's funds or having the charity coordinator spend time on re-inputting her contacts instead of doing other more valuable work for the charity.  I'd appreciate it if those reading this dug deep and gave me some more eyes out there searching for a solution.

IT WOULD BE EXTRA NICE IF A MICROSOFT TECH READS THIS TO CHECK WITH HIS UPPER TIER SUPPORT TO FIND A SOLUTION FOR ME SINCE SOME REALLY POOR PLANNING FROM THE OUTLOOK 2013 DESIGNERS CREATED THIS PROBLEM. You will gain great kudos from me and the charity that I'm working with. :D

Thanks,

Jeff

Hi,

As far as I know, Microsoft doesn't provide such a tool to convert .ost to .pst, but you can try some 3rd-party tools, some of these tools provide a free trial version, which may be helpful in your scenario.

Regards,

Melon Chen
TechNet Community Su

Microsoft don't provide any tool for OST to PST conversion and even never suggest you to use any third party tool on your OST file. You have to use them at your own risk choose the one with good feedback on download websites.

Dear Jeffery, all tools for extracting data from .ost file are paid. I don't think you have any alternate rather than paid utilities in the said scenario.

Sadly, no one had a magic bullet. The client chose to recreate their address book which wastes their valuable time. I will see if I can find a "suggestion box" for Microsoft as this is unacceptable. We had a good backup, access to the original hard disk, and every precaution in place to protect the data, but this major design flaw caused us to lose data. This is bad. This customer had a fairly small contact list with under 100 people in it. I can't imagine the pain it would cause to a salesman or other contact heavy job. We shouldn't have to buy 3rd party products to recover data from our files. This is a bad design, and I can't imagine why they changed it. In previous versions of MSO, I easily recovered the address book and was able to put the customer back to 100%.

Thanks for the help,

Jeff

Sadly, no one had a magic bullet. The client chose to recreate their address book which wastes their valuable time......................

In previous versions of MSO, I easily recovered the address book and was able to put the customer back to 100%.

A suggestion to mitigate a recurrence in the future

#1 - Create a new PST file in this profile
#2 - Make this new PST file - the default data file for the profile which will result in the default <contact> and <calendar> folders being located in the PST file instead of the "This Computer Only" folders in the .OST file
#3 - Copy the contacts from the "This Computer Only" folder to the contact folder in the PST file

Doing the above is going to result in 2 contact folders - one in the PST file and one in the OST file. If you don't want the "This Computer Only" folders - delete the email account and re-add it. This will result in a new .OST file being created without the "This Computer Only" folders (but be sure that the contact/calendar items are properly copied first as noted step #3 above.

Also - there will be a complete folder set in the PST file (i.e. <Inbox> etc) - which can be ignored. Email for an IMAP account will <always> be downloaded to the folders in the IMAP .ost file.

Following this approach - at least contacts will always be available since Outlook never deletes PST files from the system

Hi Karl,

Thanks for the info. The problem is that the account is IMAP, not exchange, and while I have a file copy of the entire user's Windows profile, the original hard drive is gone. The system had a motherboard failure and while I do have a good data file backup, there doesn't seem to be any way to put the backup copy of the OST file back into outlook.  I tried recreating the account just as it was before and then swapping the OST files, but Outlook recognized that the OST was from another system and would not open it.  If you know a way to recreate the outlook profile in such a way that it will recognize the OST file I have or fool outlook into mounting the OST file I have, it's not going to work because there doesn't seem to be a way to recreate the Outlook profile so that it will recognize old OST file. I assume it's got something in the registry which I do not have a copy. Truthfully, I never thought of doing more of a backup because this was never a problem with previous versions of Outlook.  I've got to wonder why they decided to store non-replicating data in a file that can't be opened after a catastrophic event.  This whole incident makes me wish they were running 2010 or 2007. :(

Thanks,

Jeff

.................... If you know a way to recreate the outlook profile in such a way that it will recognize the OST file I have or fool outlook into mounting the OST file I have, it's not going to work because there doesn't seem to be a way to recreate the Outlook profile so that it will recognize old OST file.

Please review my last response - it was purely for configuring your client's account to prevent a similar scenario from occurring again - nothing to do with what happened or any copy of an OST file that you may have. You are absolutely correct - you cannot associate an .ost file to an IMAP Account. The purpose of the steps outlined in the previous response is to avoid contacts/calendar items being saved in the OST file - no more - no less.

I see that now.  Sorry for any confusion.  I was rushing through my message and missed that. Your plan seems sound, but I'm still unclear what they were thinking when they designed it this way. If I seemed like I was venting, it was strictly about the problem and not anything about your response.

I plan to take a slightly different approach.  I'm going to export their existing IMAP setup to a PST file and then "??downgrade??" them to POP3 which will create a normal PST file.  They don't work from a lot of different devices, so I think this will work best for them.  Also, they are a non-profit, so I'm looking at getting them the non-profit edition of MSO365 which will give them a full Exchange backend.  It's a bit of overkill for a little 2 person non-profit, but I'm willing to donate the effort involved if I can get them on a better system.

Thanks again for your assistance,

jeff

I see that now.  Sorry for any confusion.  I was rushing through my message and missed that. Your plan seems sound, but I'm still unclear what they were thinking when they designed it this way. If I seemed like I was venting, it was strictly about the problem and not anything about your response.

I plan to take a slightly different approach.  I'm going to export their existing IMAP setup to a PST file and then "??downgrade??" them to POP3 which will create a normal PST file.  They don't work from a lot of different devices, so I think this will work best for them.  Also, they are a non-profit, so I'm looking at getting them the non-profit edition of MSO365 which will give them a full Exchange backend.  It's a bit of overkill for a little 2 person non-profit, but I'm willing to donate the effort involved if I can get them on a better system.

Thanks again for your assistance,

jeff

RE: " but I'm still unclear what they were thinking when they designed it this way"

Just so you know - you're not the only one. Don't know the backdrop to how this came to be but not one of the smartest design decisions ever made IMHO. Unfortunately for now, things are what they are but I did take the liberty of conveying this thread to the Outlook team for informational purposes.

As for POP vs IMAP - if more than one person accesses the same email account and replies - you may want to re-think going to POP in the interim. That could cause more aggravation then the work-around since POP is one-way traffic for the <Inbox> - nothing else gets sync'd and only the person who replied would have any "reply history" in <their> Sent Items folder