Opening archive from a CD or DVD
I've archived an old pst-file to a CD and I'm trying to access it now because it contains data I need again. I've tried opening it in Outlook, but it won't let me.
How can I access my data again?
As Outlook requires read/write access to the pst-file in order to access it, you cannot open the pst-file directly from a read only medium like a CD or DVD.
You must first copy the pst-file back from the CD to the hard drive and then verify that the Read Only file attribute hasn’t been set on the pst-file for the file you just copied back: right click the pst-file and choose Properties.
Once you’ve done that, go to Outlook and open the pst-file via:
- File-> Open & Export-> Open Outlook Data File…
HTML Email Archiver
This is quite a cumbersome method of accessing your archived data. The HTML Email Archiver for Outlook by MAPILab is an add-in that can help you with this. It allows you to archive your data to a more platform independent format (meaning you won’t be tied to Windows or Outlook).
As the name indicates, this add-in will allow you to archive your mail into the HTML format. This will allow you to access your archive on any system that you may be using in the future even when you don't have Outlook installed anymore.
Especially for companies it could be useful to publish the mail archive to a read only network share after a project has been completed. This way the information remains directly accessible without losing the mail flow; a thing you cannot achieve by archiving to a pst-file or separate msg-files.
When archiving to a CD, you can opt to include both the HTML version and the pst-version on a single disk. This will allow you to both;
- quickly find the information you need
- still open it directly in Outlook when you need to forward the original email message or access it in the msg-format.
For more information see: HTML Email Archiver for Outlook by MAPILab (discount code: 4PM76A8 )
