Sharing Outlook 2003 Between Accounts

[return_03]

We have a main email account provided by our ISP. My question is how do I set up Outlook 2003 to share that one email between my two parents accounts in Windows XP? I did it before, but some things did not work properly, and I did it a while ago and forgot what I did. I need to archive all incoming emails into a .pst file (or something else that would work), and share one address book. Both of my parents need to be able to access the same old emails and the address book in each of their accounts. I have some old .pst files that I need to import and move to the one shared .pst. I also have some separate address books that need to be merged into one shared address book. Thanks for any help, and sorry if this a common question.

[nmX.Memnoch]

All you need to do is configure the profiles in each account to point to the same PST. Get away from the address books. Import those into the Outlook Contacts. Seperate Address Books are a thing of the past. Outlook 2003 will use them, but it's much happier just using Contacts.

[return_03]

I'll have to look into Outlook Contacts. Never heard of it before. Can you give me a little more information about it? I can point both accounts to one pst file, and use filters to get the mail there, but how do I share one inbox? Some mail will not be filtered to the pst file, so it will be in the inbox of one account and not in the other.

[lingk]

I am kind of looking to do that same thing, but not sharing. I want to move the inbox from one user account to a different user account. can this be done?

[return_03]

All right, I have both accounts sharing the same main file. Both now have identical folders and emails, and update in tandem. Now I need to figure out how to share contacts. I looked at how they work, and it seems to be better than the address book. I just need to find out how to make one account share the contacts in the other account, and how to back them up. I will be investigating this, but comments are welcome.

@lingk:

If you are using Windows XP, the file that all the mail is stored in is fairly easy to find, its just buried. Go into My Computer, and if you do not have it enabled you need to be able to see hidden files and folders. In My Computer go to Tools > Folder Options. Click on the View tab. Under Hidden Files and Folders select the 'show hidden files and folders' radio button. Hit apply and get back to My Computer. Go to C: and go into Documents and Settings. Go into the account folder that has the email you want to move. Now you will need to double click Local Settings (should be gray/transparent because it is hidden), go to Application Data, then Microsoft, then Outlook. There should be a file in there named 'outlook', and is a ".pst" file. Depending on the amount of emails the size could be large or small. One backup pst file I made from college was almost 200mb. Copy that file to the desktop (or if you know how, directly to the desktop of the user account you want the emails moved to) and log out and log in to the other account. Now, if the new account already has been used and emails have been received, you will need to import the pst file you just recovered. I would just import because it is easier than replacing the current file. Start up Outlook, set it up if needed, then go to File, Import. Import the pst file, it is fairly simple. I believe that if you just keep the default values it will import and merge the emails from the other account into the new one. Hope that helps. Post any questions if anything is not clear. Anyone else correct me if I am wrong, or if this is not what you are looking for.

[return_03]

So I played around in Outlook with Contacts, and its pretty cool. I made a new contact in my dad's account, logged out, logged in to my mom's account, and checked to see if that contact was there. It was! So apparently all I set out to do is now done. Thanks for the help. I hope the info I gave to lingk helped.