I'm getting ready to go on a trip with my new computer and although I have managed to figure most things out the one thing that is driving me crazy is getting my address book (and only my address book with telephone numbers, etc.) from Outlook 2003 (running XP Professional on my older computer) to Outlook 2007 (running Vista Business) on my new computer.

There must be a file somewhere that can be copied from the old computer and put on the new one. Does anyone know?

TIA.

Your address book should be stored in a .pab file.

You can use the following method to locate your .pab file.

(From http://support.microsoft.com/kb/287070)

Use the following steps to locate your Personal Address Book file:
1. If you are running Microsoft Windows 95 or Microsoft Windows 98: Click Start, point to Find, and then click Files or Folders.

If you are running Microsoft Windows 2000 or Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me): Click Start, point to Search, and then click For Files or Folders.
2. Type *.pab, click My Computer in the Look In box, and then click Find Now.

Note the location of the .pab file, and include it in your backup.

In your case, copy to USB stick and then plug USB stick with file into new computer.

Then use the following steps to import it into Outlook 2007.

From (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/913496)

When you install Outlook 2007, it automatically converts the Personal Address Book that you used in an earlier version of Microsoft Outlook. Outlook 2007 then adds the converted data to your Outlook 2007 Contacts folder.

If Outlook 2007 does not automatically convert your Personal Address Book, you can import your Personal Address Book to Outlook 2007. To do this, follow these steps:
1. Start Outlook 2007.
2. Click Import and Export on the File menu.
3. Click Import from another program or file, and then click Next.
4. Click Personal Address Book, and then click Next.
5. Click Browse, locate the Personal Address Book that you want to import, and then click OK.

Note Earlier versions of Outlook assign a .pab file name extension to a Personal Address Book. By default, Outlook stores the Personal Address Book in the following folder:
C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook
6. Click Next.
7. Click Finish to import the Personal Address Book.

Hope this helps.

Thanks Xenono. Unfortunately though I can't find a *.pab file on my computer. In this regard I note the instructions above refer to computers with Windows 95, 98, Me, and 2000. My older computer is running XP Pro. Do you know if there are any instructions for an XP Pro machine (running Outlook 2003) transferring to a Vista Business machine (with Outlook 2007)?

Well, I somehow got it to work by creating a .csv file (if I'm remembering right) using the export command in Outlook 2003, and then importing that file into Outlook 2007.

Not real user friendly in that during the process I had to guess what to do at a few juncture points.

Are you hooked into an Exchange server somewhere? If so, just create a .pst (personal folders) and copy your email into it. It's a .ost file, by the way, if you are hooked into Exchange and have default/normal setup.

If you're just using Outlook without exchange, then it's already a .pst file. Just copy that to your new machine and import it directly into Outlook.

Won't his addresses show up automatically if he is hooked up to an exchange server?

Can anyone recommend a good and hopefully free way to recover info from a priv1.edb file? Apparently, my prive1.smt file is gone and I MUST recover some old emails from this edb file. Thanks.

Hi, you go to Export file, and then you choose to export to a PST file, then you choose the folder "Contacts" and export it to contact.pst on your desktop/flashdisk

Then you go to your new outlook 2007 and do the import section (I don't remember the names in English, because my computer is on Danish.)

If you do it in this way, it will work 100 percent and also if you have contacts in other codepages, then you will be able to see them in your outlook too.
With csv, it does not always take all your data.
Write me if you have any problems.

Forgot to tell, this is procedures even you running with an exchange server or local.
Only difference is that the main PST file contains all data, and on exchange it will have an OST file on your local computer.
From all kind of Outlook you can export and import the PST and it only contain what you select to export. Example "contacts", or "Calender".
If you need to have both, then you need to export 2 files, and please remember to export them on a location where you can find them (Ex. Desktop) and change the name for each "contacts.pst, calender.pst" Cheers.

Thanks. The priv1.edb is actually all that I have and I need to somehow retrieve some messages (about 10 GIG worth). My current Outlook setup has been transfered over to another system but it is missing those emails. The contacts and calender are not a concern at all. I have found some expensive programs that can retrieve information from an edb file but I just can't pay $600 for that. Also, some of the demo versions of these programs work fine but don't seem to display the correct date on my older deleted items. I hired a computer guy to try and "mount" this priv1.edb file but he was unable. I had a recent crash and that is why all of this happened. Apparently, it would be easy if I also had the corresponding STM file but I do not.

Does anyone have any additional input on this (converting EDB file to PST file)? Thanks.

Now's a good time to migrate from Outlook to Google.

With Gmail, calendar, tasks and contact lists, Google offers pretttttty much everything you need on an enterprise server. Far more practical IMHO

And don't think the irony goes unnoted when sextourismboards become Mitchee's source for tech support

I think you need a qualified professional to help you. I did a little looking around, priv1.edb is a backup file for MS Exchange. You need to reinstall Exchange exactly the same as before and then recover the data for export. And 10GB is a hell of a lot of data to deal with. There is a program to help called ExMerge from Microsoft but you need Exchange to run it - again something that should be done by someone with Exchange experience.

Thanks for the responses. I was running a server with Exchange but I have given up on that after the crash so I'm not sure if the Exchange that is on that server is still usable. It was reinstalled by a few professionals already. I was able to grab all of my pre-2008 information from old Outlook Express files that I had luckily saved to a portable drive. I just want to get access to the EDB file so that I can retrieve everything from 2008 to the crash. Luckily, ALL of my sent items and my deleted items for 2009 were all saved to my local computer instead of just the server (unlike my old deleted items, which were in separate folders) and I was able to retrieve that information.

Do you think that with Exmerge, someone could take my EDB file and I could walk away with a usable PST file or is that being too wishful? I'm worried that since it is supposed to be accompanied by a corresponding STM file (missing), that it might be tough.

The Gmail idea is great. I'm paying $90 per month just to use someone else's hosted Outlook but I have a lot of data. I think that I tried moving stuff to Gmail in the past but the problem was either something wrong with my email address compatibility or all of the imported data could not be sorted correctly by date, sender, etc... or I just had too much data. I'm going to investigate again now in hopes of putting the $90 per month toward beer.