How do I recover a personal address book?

[shakatak]

One of the managers at my job lost all his contact from his personal address book and would like it recovered. How do I go about this?

 

[WhoKilledKenny]

Personal address and contacts are stored locally, not on the Exchange server. Do a search on the local drive for any *.pst files. If an archive was set up (manual and/or auto)and a .pst file exists, you should be able to connect to it via Outlook. Hopefully the contacts will be present.

If a .pst file exists:
From Outlook (this example 2003) go to file -> Open -> Outlook data file... -> browse to the location of the .pst file and open it.

If a .pst file does not exists, I would suggest training your boss on how to backup his local outlook files using archiving.
From Outlook go to file -> Archive -> choose mailbox (which will include calendar, Contacts, inbox, etc...).
Set Archive location (either local or a Network Share) and save.
Also look into Auto Archive Settings to set-up a scheduled archive.

 

[58sniper]

Personal address and contacts are stored locally, not on the Exchange server.

Not entirely true. Based on the assumption that since this is posted in the Exchange 2003 forum that the mailbox is stored on the server, Contacts are part of the mailbox, and are stored on the server. (If the mailbox is an evil .pst, they are stored there). Personal Address Books are stored whereever they were configured to be stored. That's USUALLY the local workstation in a file with a .pab extension.

Pat Richard, MCSE MCSA:Messaging CNA
Microsoft Exchange MVP