i have windows 2000 pro and office 2003 with outlook installed. i
havent been using the internet with this computer for awhile but i
want to read all my old emails. its been a few weeks since ive had to
use outlook but when i started it up, all i had in my inbox was the
first welcome email just like when i first installed it. there wasnt
anything done to the computer at all pretty much besides using it for
word processing, but when i did some browsing around i found something
odd.

there was another account created if you will. in my 'documents and
settings' folder it added a 'bob.wc34523190...' in addition to the
'bob' folder. the new 'bob.wc34523190...' has a small archive file in
the outlook folder (45kb) whereas the plain 'bob' folder's archive
file is about 16.4 mb and im guessing that's where everything is.

now question is how do i restore the old emails/archive file??? 

thanks in advance.

Yikes - definitely sounds virusish, but my cursory searching didn't
find any similar problems.

Can you see any useful info when you do this?  Hold Shift + Right
Click on the bigger file; "Open with..."; "Select the Program from a
list"; then pick, say, WordPad.

Maybe you will see enough of the guts to find some old info, such as
email addresses or phone numbers, etc.  It's probably in
wide-character format, so e v e r y   t h i n g   m i g h t   l o o k 
 l i k e   t h i s .

Hi, sounds like the two profiles are one online and one offline. It
may be as you were not online for a while one day you booted up and
went into a new offline profile which now cant see the old emails, the
emails themselves look like are either in an archive folder which has
been created in one profile but isnt linked to the email account in
the other profile. You say you had Outlook as a default install so the
autoarchive might have been on and has just archived emails older than
a certain date. The presence of the outlook welcome email suggests
that you have in fact gone into a new email account profile and not
your original one.

You could try booting up and seeing if you get a choice of desktops to
log into or make sure you are all connected on-line and see if the pc
detects so and goes in to other profile anyway. you could also try
just opening the archive folder if it will let you.

If using Outlook 2003 i think the function is under the File menu and
then look for something like open other folder or data file, cant
remember exactly as im not in front of a windows xp outlook2003
machine, but you will probably see some thing like that and be given
the choice of opening a old outlook data file or a 2003 one, choose
the 2003 one and browse to the archive file you found to open it.

The only problem you may have is if the profile you are currently in
doesnt have permission to access the other one. In which case try
moving the archive file to your current my documents but this may have
the same problem with you not being able to open it or go to the
control panel and click on users and make sure you have admin rights
to the local machine.

Hope this helps.

Rob Macleod
http://www.a-web-host.com

As far as i know if you go to the file menu of outlook and go to
something like import/export. You then want to import a .pst file.
Locate the 16Mb file and import it. This sould import all the e-mails
into the current outlook profile.

Hope this was helpful

David

hi.

The answer to your question is quite simple i must say.
i'll guide you step by step to ease on you.

1) while your Outlook is open, go to Tools->Options (on the FILE menu scale).
2) click on the <MAIL SETUP> Tab, and then click on the third button <Data 

Files...>
3) click on the button <Add...>
4) choose "Microsoft Outlook Personal Folder File (.pst)" adn click <OK>.
5) go to the directory where the *.pst (the archive file that you mantioned)
and choose him, afterwards click on <OK>
6) and on the new opend window click again on <OK>
7) you can close all the windows now that had been opened.

Thats all, now you can see that on the Mail Folders (on the left) 
you have new item called "Personal Folders", there should be all your old 

mails and etc...

hope it worked for you...

yep sounds odd, you can do as machine2k suggested, but the 'why did it
happen' still exists...
Is this a company networked PC? is it possible that the IT dept have
migrated your PC recently?

Another thing, your settings and overall look of the desktop, is this the same?

BB