Fynx

No comments on using a different Exchange server to recover the .ost or why I can't add new contacts? The latter makes it seem as if something else is wrong and not just a deleted account. Either way, if there's no more input, I'll just spring for a recover suite and (hopefully) go from there. Thanks again for the replies thus far.

I wasn't able to pull up a deleted .pst. Let's say I scrap the whole mess, taking the emails as a loss, and re-entering my contact and calendar information. This leads to another issue. I can't re-add any old entries because Outlook says they already exist. But, if I delete the outlook.ost, I think I will lose not only the items I had when I was connecting to the exchange server, but also those added afterwards. Is this correct? While I would like to just recovery the old stuff, I need to look at what's going to get me back on track as quickly as possible. Since I will still have the .ost, I can use recovery tools on it after I get back from a trip.

Would it be possible to load this .ost file up on any Exchange server? Or would there still be a problem with account related stuff? Currently running a data carver, but since it's been a few days, I'm not too hopeful.

Nitroshift: Thanks for the link. IcemanND: I assume you mean, re-connect to the original Exchange server. This isn't possible as that no longer exists. If you mean creating a dummy account (ie. channel9.msdn.com), I tried the linked approach without much success. There was a nag confirmation on each auto-connect for the 127.0.0.1 server address and the "Private" and "Public" folders were inaccessible. I don't recall the exact error (I can check if needed), but it was a generic "can't access, maybe corrupted" message and not a security access issue. Thanks for the responses and the move.

Was going blind at the office -- this should be punted to the MS Office category. Apologies to the mods.

I use Outlook 2003 to connect to an Exchange server. Recently, I have changed my setup and no longer access Exchange, but rather an account through my local ISP. Having done so, I deleted the old Exchange account. What I did not know was that this removes all old Contacts, Emails, etc along with the Exchange account information. All I have now is an outlook.ost file. I have seen where people use ost2pst.exe to convert the file, but since I run Outlook 2003 -- an unsupported version -- it generates an error and fails to convert correctly -- at least the pst file will not open in Outlook. There is also the scanpst.exe method, but this isn't working either due to, I assume, it not being a corrupt inbox, but rather a deleted account. Are there any methods or tools that will allow the recovery of these old emails, accounts, etc from the leftover Exchange outlook.ost file? I would love to find a free tool, but if it has to be a commercial application, I'd appreciate links to them. There appears to be either expensive software or shady looking sites. Any help would be great. Thanks.