Outlook Backups – what about .OST files?

Topic

New Reply

I just read the 24 Feb 2017 column by Lance Whitney on how to back up your Outlook .PST file which was interesting, but my Hotmail accounts now use .OST files since they swapped to using the Microsoft Exchange Connector. Does anybody know of a simple, automated and robust method to back-up these Emails? The problem being, if I were to lose access to one of my Hotmail accounts (say through disuse), I cannot attach an .OST file to an existing account in the same way as a .PST file and regain access to my messages (so if I back-up the .OST file itself it’s useless for either backup or archival purposes).

I am aware there are (paid for) specialist third party tools that can read .OST files, but they are not cheap.
I am also aware that I can drag & drop messages from an .OST file into a .PST file as a workaround, but this isn’t ideal and I would prefer an automated approach.
I guess I could set up a rule to move all messages on arrival to a .PST file, but haven’t actually tried this and suspect it will result various side issues.

Has anybody else out there looked at this problem and found a robust solution?

Reply | Quote

Replies

If you are going to stop using a Microsoft email account export the whole structure to a PST file. If you are not going to stop using it, just configure it in Outlook. When you open Outlook, Outlook will login to the account and it will never go away from disuse.

--Joe

Reply | Quote

If you are going to stop using a Microsoft email account export the whole structure to a PST file. If you are not going to stop using it, just configure it in Outlook. When you open Outlook, Outlook will login to the account and it will never go away from disuse.

I was previously using .PST files but this setup stopped working and I found I could no longer connect to my Hotmail accounts using POP or IMAP (I gave up after some considerable effort). I was forced to switch to using the Exchange connector & thus OST files.

Reply | Quote

If you regularly use Outlook and have not removed any accounts from the default Send/Receive group then Outlook will connect to the accounts automatically on the send/receive frequency you configured (or the default which is 15 minutes I think).

--Joe

Reply | Quote

As Joe pointed out before, you can use File, Export from an Exchange account to a .pst file.

But it’s not often done or needed as the .ost file is just a copy of what’s stored on the server.

Reply | Quote