OUTLOOK contacts are vanished

[Guest sumeshmd]

hi guys,

 

i am facing with a problem with outlook 2003 contacts. we have a new employee and his laptop was already configured with emails of his previous company. i have just removed his email accounts

and archived his mails. then configured new email account and imported our contact list as .csv file. after these i can see only the new addresses in the contacts folder. all the previous were got vanished which is very important to him. his previous mails are all there. only the contacts are missing. but if he started composing a mail , by typing the letters in "to" field, some addresses are showing.

 

is there any way to get that contact list back? we are suing POP3 mail system.

 

thanks in advance

[Guest Joseph]

Hmm... not 100% sure on where the contacts list is stored but I'm going to guess for POP users, it should be in his .PST file stored in the outlook folder in his profile. Look for any .pst files and look inside each of them. Hopefully the address book is in one of them.

 

I DO HOWEVER know where the auto-complete information is stored. It's in the .NK2 file stored in the outlook profile folder.

 

I did a search here on groovyland and found the following link which explains where it is in detail under Solution #2:

 

Location of Outlook NK2 file <---- Look under solution #2

 

Granted the article is about removing addresses from auto-cache however it does the job in explaining where it is. Worst, case, just do a search on your system drive or wherever you installed outlook and search for *.nk2 this should get you to the file.

 

Once you have the .nk2 file you can use several different tools to export/extract the addresses from it. I did a quick Google/url] and found this one: debunk2 - Project Hosting on Google Code

 

If you don't want to extract the addresses, just delete the existing .nk2 file being used and rename the old to take it's place. Do this while outlook is closed of course and you should be all set with the old Auto-Complete addresses showing up when you click on the TO or CC boxes in Outlook.

[Steve Krause]

The .nk2 file has the magic for the AutoComplete addresses. Joseph is also correct in regards to the location of the Address book. It is in the .PST file which your customer was using.

 

What OS are you using? XP or Vista?

 

For XP you can find the NK2 and .PST files here:

C:\Documents and Settings\mrgroove\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\

 

Be sure to take a copy of the files to back them up before messing with them.

 

For Vista and Windows-7, the .NK2 and .PST files are here:

 

Default location for .PST and .OST files:

D:\Users\mrgroove\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\

 

Default location for .NK2:

D:\Users\mrgroove\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Outlook

 

Now granted, these files can be moved however those should be the default locations.

 

Keep us updated on your success!

[shockersh]

 

If you don't want to extract the addresses, just delete the existing .nk2 file being used and rename the old to take it's place. Do this while outlook is closed of course and you should be all set with the old Auto-Complete addresses showing up when you click on the TO or CC boxes in Outlook.

 

true true. I do this every time I move to a new PC. I take my .PST files and my .NK2 files with me, copy them over the top of the existing .NK2 file and it's like I never upgraded

[Guest sumeshmd]

i got the nk2 files and it is showing only the email addresses. the user wants full contact list with number and all. is there any way to get back the contacts?

[alexmvp]

i got the nk2 files and it is showing only the email addresses. the user wants full contact list with number and all. is there any way to get back the contacts?

 

Yeah - the nk2 files only contain the auto completion data when you click in the TO or CC lines in outlook. Those are all email only addresses.

 

What you need to do is find the .PST file he was using at the other company (should be in the outlook folder pointed out by mrgroove) and open it up. in it you should find the contact list / address book unless of course he was not using a .PST from his previous company. It IS possible he was using an Exchange Server at the previous company therefore his address book would have been part of his Mailbox on the mailbox server. In that case when he left, it's GONE.

[Steve Krause]

Any updates sumeshmd?