Backup your Outlook PST file
If you’re an Outlook user, you may not know, but all of your email messages, contacts, calendar appointments, etc are stored in a .PST file. PST stands for “Personal Folder File”, and can be quite handy when you want to consolidate everything for backups.
But how do you back THIS file up?
Sure, you can do it through the import/export wizard in Outlook, but the whole point in being productive is to automate the menial tasks. So I’m going to show you how to do it.
To begin with, you’ll need to download the Windows 2003 Resource Tools, since we’ll be using robocopy. Also, you’ll need to check and see if your system has Taskkill, and if not, download it. To check, go to the command prompt (Click “Start->Run”, type “cmd”, and at the prompt type “taskkill”. If you DONT get a line saying it cant be found, then you have it. If you dont have it, get it from the above link and drop it in to your windows\system32 directory).
Ok, now that you have the tools, bust out Notepad, and cut and paste the following into it, saving it with a .bat extension.
@echo off
taskkill /f /im OUTLOOK.EXE
robocopy “X:\Documents and Settings\user\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook” “X:\Backup” *.* /S /PURGE /NP /XO
“C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\OUTLOOK.EXE”
You’ll need to change the “X:” to correspond with your setup, as well as the backup destination. Also, double check to make sure your path to “Outlook.exe” is right. If not, just change it here.
So what does this script do? Well:
Save the file with a .bat extension, add it to your scheduled tasks, and you’re done!
robocopy, outlook, backup, pst, email backup, email storage, scripting, windows backup, microsoft office backup, outlook backup
December 5th, 2007 at 3:39 am
Yeah, great insults…
More to the point, add this bit to a logoff script on a AD GPO, and i think you have a nice little work around for folder redirection / offline files NOT backing up pst files in the application dir. (cause this is default behavior in win 2003 / XP environments.
Of course to be nice is should be able to use %directory% references, like %username%, so it can be plugged in generically and apply to everyone.
anyway, thanks for the idea, i think i’m going to work on it tomorrow at work.
= )
stupid shits lol
February 14th, 2008 at 11:22 am
I agree that side by side with simplicty it can cerate problems and will utilize a lot of bandwidth, which in our company can bring the networks down. after a lot of searches decided to use edgesafe from datamills (http://www.datamills.com).
December 23rd, 2008 at 2:27 am
Nice Article. Keep up The Good work.
Thanks for the information!!
December 25th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
In this situation recommend use this utility-view pst file,which to my mind is freeware,also it has many other features,program can help to restore a mailbox,stored on Microsoft Exchange Server or a file with *.pst extension,tool belongs to programs that view .pst,it will process any file,it is safe to work even with damaged files,will perform necessary actions, you can see a preview window,that shows recovered folder tree and emails in a preview mode,can convert your file to a file with *.pst extension, that follows the original structure,viewing pst files without Outlook is not usually needed on a regular basis.
February 12th, 2009 at 3:01 am
At work with outlook files advise use next tool-outlook fix,as far as i know program is free,it is used by a great many of individuals and businesses every day for a wide variety of tasks that require 100% stability and reliability: storing emails, business and personal contacts, as well as other important information, such as appointments, tasks and notes,restore data after internal software errors, power failures or hard drive crashes, let alone other possible reasons,can also be used to recover data from Microsoft Exchange .ost files and convert them into Microsoft Outlook .pst files,allows you to easily repair damaged .pst files and recover your information by making a few easy steps,knows how to fix Microsoft Outlook perfectly well, it will prompt you for the data recovery method you would like to use,saving the output data either as a single .pst file or as a set of .eml, .vcf and .txt files,can be easily imported by other applications supporting these formats, such as Microsoft Outlook Express or Windows Address Book.