Outlook Contacts File as field blank

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XeonicXpression@gmail.com - 25 Jul 2006 20:37 GMT

I recently had a client who was running outlook 2000. He didn't delete
any e-mail for 4 years and his pst file grew to 2gb and ended up
corrupting. We upgraded to outlook 2003, used the pst cutting utility
provided by microsoft, and ran the inbox repair tool. We got most of
the e-mail and contacts back. When he goes to create a new contact
everything look fine until he saves it. It is put at the top of the
list with a blank "file as" field. If you open up the contact, it
shows the correct "file as" though. I haven't been able to find any
information on a possible solution to this.

Thank you for the help,
Mark

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Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook] - 25 Jul 2006 22:22 GMT

How did you migrate the data to Outlook 2003?

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Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]

>I recently had a client who was running outlook 2000. He didn't delete
> any e-mail for 4 years and his pst file grew to 2gb and ended up
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
> Thank you for the help,
> Mark

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XeonicXpression - 25 Jul 2006 22:58 GMT

I imported it through the import wizard and did just contacts.

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Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook] - 26 Jul 2006 00:08 GMT

Thought so.
Never import Outlook data unless you like this kind of problem. You had no
need to import. You weren't trying to convert another file format.
I trust you still have a backup of your data? Open it and copy your Contacts
from it so you won't lose data like the File As... field.

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Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]

>I imported it through the import wizard and did just contacts.

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XeonicXpression - 26 Jul 2006 15:58 GMT

> Thought so.
> Never import Outlook data unless you like this kind of problem. You had no
> need to import. You weren't trying to convert another file format.
> I trust you still have a backup of your data? Open it and copy your Contacts
> from it so you won't lose data like the File As... field.

The only file I have is his inbox.pst. Since it is a 2000 version pst,
Outlook 2003 wont let me just copy his into the directory. When I did
that it said it wasn't compatible. So I guess my question is how do I
get access to the contacts without doing the import?

Also, we didn't lose any of the Contact "File as" field data when we
imported. The only problem is trying to create a new contact.

Thanks for your help,
Mark

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Brian Tillman - 26 Jul 2006 21:39 GMT

> The only file I have is his inbox.pst. Since it is a 2000 version
> pst, Outlook 2003 wont let me just copy his into the directory.

You can do that when going from OL 2000 to OL 2003, since OL 2003 reads OL
2000 PSTs just fine, but it's not advisable. You should never overwrite one
PST with another.

> When I did that it said it wasn't compatible.

That's what OL 2000 will say when you try to use an OL 2003 PST. This is
backward from what you first described.

> So I guess my question is
> how do I get access to the contacts without doing the import?

File>Open>Outlook Data File.

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Brian Tillman

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Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook] - 26 Jul 2006 22:16 GMT

Your post is not accurate. PST files from Outlook 2000 are perfectly
compatible with Outlook 2003. Read my post again. I told you what to do.
Open the file in Outlook 2003 and copy what you need from it.
I never said importing deleted your File As... field in the Contact Record.
I said it caused your problem, and it did. It was the connection between
your File As... field and the view that got toasted. There are countless
connections such as this that get disrupted when you import PST files.
Repeat after me. I will never import a PST file (even if Microsoft says it
will work).

Signature

Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]

>
>> Thought so.
[quoted text clipped - 15 lines]
> Thanks for your help,
> Mark

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