Really Bad Day in the Field

smackedass · Guest

The worst thing that has happened to me since I've been working as a private
tech/consultant has just happened to me. I lost what my customer claims is,
conservatively, 5000 email addresses.

He was diligent about backing up his My Documents folder. He uses Outlook
2003, but never backed up his email. Before I re-installed XP onto his
hard drive, I backed up Outlook.pst (which was last modified that day, right
before I picked his computer up) and Archive.pst. They were both located in
the same path/folder where they usually are. I don't remember if I searched
for all .pst files on the hard drive.

After the re-install, I imported Outlook.pst, and the emails came through,
but not the contact list. Needless to say, he's happy. I don't know what
I could have done differently. To be sure, this guy is kind of a nitwit, he
operates a successful business with one office in Florida, and one here on
the Cape, but none of his network is password protected. He thought (until
yesterday) that the best way to keep his data safe and private was to keep
it on his own computer. I wanted to discuss this with his office manager,
who works down in the FL office, to see if there were another .pst file on
one of the network drives, but he claims that she is too busy to talk to me.
I also offered to do a data recovery, at my own time and my own expense, on
the hard drive in question, but he says that it's too late. He was just
about to put out a huge marketing message via email, and now he has to
figure out Plan B.

He also uses another local PC technician that I would like to speak with,
but for some reason, he does not want me to speak with him.

Certainly I don't take things like this lightly. I'm giving him a full
refund, and am assuring him that I will do whatever it takes to make matters
as right as possible. But he just has written the matter off, and is
insistent that somehow I dropped the ball, and thinks that further
cooperation will only be a waste of his time.

How much sleep would you lose over this? What could I have done
differently, and should I offer to do anything else? To what extent do you
folks analyze the integrity of user data while doing a routine job?

Thanks,

smackedass

Barry Watzman · Guest

Re: "Contacts are kept in the PST itself, the only way he could be right
is if there was another PST file on his hard drive."

That is not (or at least not necessarily) correct.

"Contacts are kept in the PST itself" is the DEFAULT way of doing
things, but it's NOT the ONLY way. Outlook also supports using a
SEPARATE .PAB file, in fact that is the way that I handle my own
contacts. And apparently that is what the individual in question was
doing also. The .PAB file is a separate file and may not even be in the
same folder as the .PST file.

Adam Leinss wrote:

Adam Leinss · Guest

Barry Watzman <WatzmanNOSPAM@neo.rr.com> wrote in
news:46e6d0ce$0$15385$4c368faf@roadrunner.com:

Barry Watzman · Guest

Re: "The Contacts folder and PAB are mutually exclusive."

They are not mutually exclusive; you can (and I do) have both. And I'm
using 2003, but have previously used 2000 and Office 97.

Adam Leinss wrote:

Mister · Guest

I was just about to ask what the advantage was of keeping a .pab over
storing them in a .pst and I found out there really isn't any, unless
you want to separate business contacts from personal contacts, etc.
Read to the end and you will find that the .pab file is no longer used
in Outlook 2007.

Taken from:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA011922051033.aspx

Personal Address Books

Outlook also supports Personal Address Books (PAB). Like Contacts, a
Personal Address Book can store a contact's name, address, e-mail
address, phone, and other information. Outlook stores the Personal
Address Book in a file with a PAB file extension. The PAB is
completely separate from your other Outlook data stored in your PST
file (or in an Exchange Server store). You can add more than one PAB
to an Outlook profile.

So why include Personal Address Books in Outlook? The Personal Address
Book is a holdover from earlier versions of Outlook. A Personal
Address Book does not support Unicode characters, which are an
expanded set of characters that includes many more symbols and
language-specific characters than the original ASCII set of
characters. (The Contacts folder does support Unicode in Outlook
2003.) However, an entry in a Personal Address Book doesn't offer the
same breadth of information about the contact as an entry in Contacts.
So, Contacts in general is often a much better place to store
contacts.

Why use a Personal Address Book? One situation is when you want to
completely separate your personal contacts from your business contacts
(which you would store in Contacts). A better alternative is to create
a separate Contacts folder just for your personal contacts. To create
a new Contacts folder, open the existing Contacts folder. On the File
menu, point to New, and click Folder. Enter a name (use Personal
Contacts in this example) in the Name box and click OK. You should now
see a new folder named Personal Contacts under Contacts.

Bottom line: A second Contacts folder is usually a better choice than
a Personal Address Book. However, you can use a PAB to keep your
personal addresses completely separate from your other Outlook data,
if needed. >END<

And for all those Outlook 2007, which includes myself, a quote from
Microsoft TechNet site:

Office Outlook 2007 does not support .pab files. During configuration,
all contacts in the Personal Address Book are migrated to the default
Outlook Contacts folder.
Reason for change: Outlook Contacts provides more functionality than
..pab files. >END<

On Wed, 12 Sep 2007 00:07:08 -0400, Barry Watzman
<WatzmanNOSPAM@neo.rr.com> wrote:

brill80917 · Guest

On Sep 8, 11:39 am, "smackedass" <kemanospamcompu...@verizon.net>
wrote:

smackedass · Guest

Tony · Guest

You did not say why you had to wipe out the drive and re-install XP.

True, you could do an Outlook backup and include all folders and subfolders but the latest pst in
the hidden folder (docs and settings\usre\app date\etc) should contain that very same info since
that is where Outlook is getting it from (unless someone moved the file). If you saved the latest
Outlook.pst, which was modified that day, why are the contacts missing? Something's fishy.

ANyway, I would not have given him a full refund. You performed a service and you recovered all of
his email messages and archives. How do you know he really had the contacts there? If his attitude
is how you described it, then I would be glad to get rid of him.

In the future, have a spare drvie and clone the original. Then do what you want to the repair
computer. Or, sometimes I install XP on the new drive along with all of the drivers and apps, then,
bring the data back in. When it all is perfect, I Ghost that to the original drive. This way I know
that I am retrieving data from the original drive and all should be there.

If you need to keep him, I would clone his current drive to a new one. Take his and do a search for
deleted files (using something like Get Back Data) and only look for PST. When you find them, use
Outlook to import them in one at a time and maybe you will find the pot o gold. He probably wont go
for it. He sounds like he already made up his mind not to use you anymore, probably at the bad
mouthing of the next technician who is probably asking him what kind of computer guy was he using?

I say, let him go and glad. Good luck.

Tony

On Sat, 08 Sep 2007 15:39:46 GMT, "smackedass" <kemanospamcomputer@verizon.net> wrote:

smackedass · Guest

"Tony" <tonyrusso@ureach.com > wrote in message
news:49dgh3dl9f5v4kq1um791c4c5hir97716u@4ax.com...

Tony · Guest

Patty · Guest

On Wed, 24 Oct 2007 01:50:40 GMT, smackedass wrote: