# Trouble Outlook pst file on new Windows 10 PC



## David_Jr (Jan 9, 2004)

I purchased a new Windows 10 laptop on Black Friday and have been working on setting it up when I have the time. I am moving from a 7 year old Toshiba Win 7 Satellite that was upgraded to Win 10 for free about 2 months ago. I have been using Outlook 07 on the old machine since it came out for personal email for my wife and I and before that a Win XP desktop. This is for our Pop3 accounts from our ISP Fairpoint Communications. I have installed Outlook 07 on the new machine and have been researching for the best way to move our accounts to the new Asus Win 10 Laptop. I set the Asus up as far as user accounts for me, my wife and our son who uses Gmail. I am not a power user. The research I have dug up from several internet sources is that I should make a copy of the .pst file from the old laptop and drop it into the same folder on the new machine. The biggest problem I am having is that I cannot see the folder that the .pst file goes into on the new machine The path is C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook and I find it no problem on my old laptop, but when I navigate to the same on the new laptop there is no Outlook folder in the Microsoft folder even though Outlook has been installed. I installed it but I have not opened it yet so I was wondering if that is why it's not there. I thought I needed to drop the pst file in before opening for the first time. I also read that it is not okay to just do an import of the pst file because you will lose most of your settings. I have un hidden files and folders but suspect this is some sort of an administrative setting that I have wrong. I have set my wife, myself and our son as administrators on the machine.

I also read that I could copy the registry key containing our account settings into the new computer's registry, but am extremely nervous about that because I've never edited a registry before and I read elsewhere that its not generally recommended because it contains absolute paths to files (in your user account folders) and information about installed add-ins and if the path is not exact when you restore it the profile will be corrupt. I don't necessarily need to do this step as I am fairly comfortable setting up the account once in Outlook.

I really appreciate any guidance and help with this and hope this is the right location for this post.


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## Triple6 (Dec 26, 2002)

If you don't open at least once the folder won't be created. But you can also just move that whole folder from the old computer first or manually create it. It doesn't matter if you open it first or not.

But you can actually place that PST file in your Documents folder instead and that's where all new version of Outlook actually store it now. The mail setup allows you to choose an existing file at any location if you go through Control Panel -> Mail to set it up: http://www.outlook-tips.net/beginner-user/use-existing-data-file-in-outlook/

For the actual email, just create it from scratch. The email settings you can view on the old computer or check them on the ISP's website.

There's also a NickName file, .nk2 on the old computer that you will want to move as well as that contains all the email addresses that have been automatically added but aren't in your PST's Contacts. It should be located in C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Outlook, move that to the same folder location on the new computer.


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## David_Jr (Jan 9, 2004)

That was so helpful!! Thanks so much.


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## David_Jr (Jan 9, 2004)

I don't seem to have an NK2 file. Is that normal.


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## David_Jr (Jan 9, 2004)

Ok I was able to figure all of this out and get my account settings in place. Then I went to choose my existing PST which I had dropped in the C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook folder which now seems to have been a mistake. When I went through the process to add it and set it as my default, Windows told me that there were errors: "Errors have been detected in the file C:\users\ user name\app data\local\microsoft\outlook\outlook.pst. Quit Outlook and all email-enabled applications and then use the Inbox repair tool (scanpst.exe) to diagnose and repair errors in the file." I ran the scanpst app and it repaired the errors and I was able to add it and set it as my default, but there is a HUGE amount of my folders and old emails missing. This file was about 500 megabytes. There were no calendar items either that I could see. I just shut it down. I have not deleted it from my old computer yet. Looks like I still have some work to do and am stumped at this point. Should I copy the pst again and put it in My Documents and try to add it again? Delete the one I just added?

Thanks for your patience.


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## Triple6 (Dec 26, 2002)

In that case I would create a new PST on the new computer to start fresh, make it the default, and then remove the previous file. Then I would recommend you take another of the file off the old computer and import it.

Import: https://support.office.com/en-us/ar...2dd579d7ce2b?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US&fromAR=1


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## David_Jr (Jan 9, 2004)

Thank you Triple6 I will give it another shot.


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## David_Jr (Jan 9, 2004)

Success!!!!! The import wizard did the trick. Thanks so much for the help


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## Triple6 (Dec 26, 2002)

glad to hear


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## dvk01 (Dec 14, 2002)

outlook on W8 and W10 does not use that app data location by default
the pst file will normally be in C:\users\< User name >\documents\outlook files


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## Triple6 (Dec 26, 2002)

It's not the operating system that determines their location but the Office version, Office 2010 and newer use the Documents folder but 2007 and older will still place their data files into those Appdata locations on newer O/S's.


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