Merging PST Files
By: Brien M. Posey
Reprinted With Permission From
Recently, a friend was telling me that someone in her
department quit their job, and she inherited all of that person’s E-mail.
However, she wanted to be able to access all of the old messages through a
single mailbox, but the most that her IT department had been able to do was to
move the other person’s messages into a PST file and then make the PST file
accessible to my friend through Outlook. However, as I explained to my friend,
there is a way of merging two PST files together so that you don’t have to deal
with the hassle of working with multiple personal folders.
While the technique that I’m about to show you works great
in the situation that I’ve just described, it works really well in disaster
recovery situations as well. When I worked for the Army, a particular officer
had a damaged PST file. I used the Inbox Repair Tool to fix the file, but still
didn’t completely trust the stability of the file. Therefore, I configured
Outlook to use a brand new empty PST file, and then I merged the salvaged data
from the damaged PST file into the new file, thus creating a stable PST file.
Before I get started, I recommend that you make a backup
copy of both PST files just in case something were to go wrong. I also strongly
recommend checking the file size of both PST files. A PST file has a size limit
of 2 GB. If the combined size of the two PST files is above 2 GB, then you’ll
have to do some cleaning before you merge the files. Otherwise, corruption will
occur during the merge and there will be a significant amount of data lost.
The first trick to merging the two PST files is to make
sure that Outlook is configured to use both files. To do so, copy both PST files
to a common location. Now, select the Services command from Outlook’s Tools
menu. When you see the Services properties sheet, make sure that the Services
tab is selected and click the Add button. Select personal Folders from the list
and click OK. Outlook will now ask you for the name of the personal folder.
Select the first of the two personal folders through the browse window and click
OK. You’ll then see a summary screen of the folder’s configuration. Click OK two
more times to incorporate the personal folder into Outlook. Now, repeat the
process to bring the second personal folder into Outlook.
Now that you’ve moved both folders into Outlook, decide
which folder will be your master folder. You’ll be moving data from the other
folder into the master folder. The next step in the process is to make a list of
the folders that exist within both personal folders, such as Inbox, Sent Items
and Deleted items. Now, go into the Inbox of the non master folder and select
the top message. Press CTRL-A to select all messages. Now, drag the messages
into the inbox in the master folder. Repeat this process for all other folders
that exist within both personal folders.
Now it’s time to merge any unique folders. You can move
unique folders by simply dragging them to the master Personal Folders container.
After everything has been moved and merged, the last step
in the process is to remove the now unnecessary personal folder. To do so,
select the Services command from the Tools menu When you see the Services tab of
the Services properties sheet, select the unwanted personal folder and click the
Remove button.
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