| What are the correct steps to move from Outlook 2000 on a laptop
| running XP to a new machine running Vista? I have spent a lot of time
| with various methods to achieve moving all emails and contacts but am
| loosing data at the moment. The biggest problem being loosing members
| of distribution lists. The following is what I have tried so far:-
| 1 - Copy the Outlook 2000 Outlook.pst file to an external USB drive
| 2- On the Vista machine set up the Outlook 2007 email accounts to
| create an empty outlook.pst file
| 3 - In Outlook 2007 I then import the outlook.pst file from the
| external USB drive.
| 4 - All looks good, all my distribution lists are there correctly
| populated with the members.
| 5 - Exit Outlook 2007 disconnect the USB drive
| 6 - Open Outlook 2007 again, receive a message that the outlook.pst on
| the USB drive isn't there (why is it expecting it to be if I imported
| the data from it?)
| 7- Look at a distribution list and all its members have disappeared.
|
| Any help would be appreciated

> Step 3 is where you go completely wrong.  Never import native Outlook data.  Simply re-use your .pst file.  Importing will always lose DLs, custom forms, connections between contacts and activities, connections between contacts and calendar birthdays, received dates on email, etc.  Why do you think there are hundreds of posts every month telling people to never import?
>
> --
> Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]
>
> Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact.  All
> unsolicited mail sent to my personal account will be deleted without
> reading. 
>
> After furious head scratching, Cricky asked:
>
> | What are the correct steps to move from Outlook 2000 on a laptop
> | running XP to a new machine running Vista? I have spent a lot of time
> | with various methods to achieve moving all emails and contacts but am
> | loosing data at the moment. The biggest problem being loosing members
> | of distribution lists. The following is what I have tried so far:-
> | 1 - Copy the Outlook 2000 Outlook.pst file to an external USB drive
> | 2- On the Vista machine set up the Outlook 2007 email accounts to
> | create an empty outlook.pst file
> | 3 - In Outlook 2007 I then import the outlook.pst file from the
> | external USB drive.
> | 4 - All looks good, all my distribution lists are there correctly
> | populated with the members.
> | 5 - Exit Outlook 2007 disconnect the USB drive
> | 6 - Open Outlook 2007 again, receive a message that the outlook.pst on
> | the USB drive isn't there (why is it expecting it to be if I imported
> | the data from it?)
> | 7- Look at a distribution list and all its members have disappeared.
> |
> | Any help would be appreciated

> >
> > --
> > Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]
> >
> > Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact.  All
> > unsolicited mail sent to my personal account will be deleted without
> > reading.
> >
> > After furious head scratching, Cricky asked:
> >
> > | What are the correct steps to move from Outlook 2000 on a laptop
> > | running XP to a new machine running Vista? I have spent a lot of time
> > | with various methods to achieve moving all emails and contacts but am
> > | loosing data at the moment. The biggest problem being loosing members
> > | of distribution lists. The following is what I have tried so far:-
> > | 1 - Copy the Outlook 2000 Outlook.pst file to an external USB drive
> > | 2- On the Vista machine set up the Outlook 2007 email accounts to
> > | create an empty outlook.pst file
> > | 3 - In Outlook 2007 I then import the outlook.pst file from the
> > | external USB drive.
> > | 4 - All looks good, all my distribution lists are there correctly
> > | populated with the members.
> > | 5 - Exit Outlook 2007 disconnect the USB drive
> > | 6 - Open Outlook 2007 again, receive a message that the outlook.pst on
> > | the USB drive isn't there (why is it expecting it to be if I imported
> > | the data from it?)
> > | 7- Look at a distribution list and all its members have disappeared.
> > |
> > | Any help would be appreciated
>
> The problem with that is that the Outlook 2000 .pst file is near the
> 2Gb limit so it needs to be imported/converted to the newer format to
> allow it to grow over 2GB.
>
> As my day job is programming I can't see what the problem is with
> someone at Microsoft writing an import routine that upgrades correctly
> from one version of Outlook to another.
>