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Help me understand this hot mess of outlook 2019 (backup/restoration)
Oh boy. So it begins with the desire to have basically a "mirror" of my entire outlook install on a second pc, but I havent even GOTTEN to that point yet. By chance I was looking at my account settings > data files and clicked on a few of my emailname.ost files. Each returned "an unknown error occurred 0x80040605" and thus my saga began. I assumed this was problematic so i first wanted to find a way to make it right.
Over the years ive ran outlook 2013/2016/2019 and so the hodgepodge of a mess thats been created im struggling to put together. I have an "Outlook Files" folder in My documents which has some .pst files named after all my emails, but it looks like they havent been modified in quite some time. A bit of googling seems to indicate this is because for IMAP accounts (which i use exclusively) transitioned from using .pst to .ost in 2016 or so. The location of said files also changed to appdata\local\microsoft\outlook.
If i look there, I have a bunch of files named myemail - my profile.ost. I also have one errant file called "this computer only.pst"
I had created this some time ago in an effort to separate the local data, from all the email accounts. I had done some transitioning between primary email accounts and I not only wanted to keep that untethered from a specific email that I may or may no longer use, but i also wanted to keep all the associated folders it comes with "rss feeds, tasks, local only calendars" etc from being lumped in with the current associated email address.
This has served its purpose exactly as intended since I dont use local only anyways. I'm unsure if its related to my issues now or not.
Either way, at current - I've done some experimenting with copies of the various folders and a full backup of windows im forced to restore to get it back to working at least, after this post is made.
Ive used outlook to export each mailbox (and the "this computer only" data file) however it only allows you to export as .pst. Ive tried deleting the "AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\This Computer Only.pst" which it recreates and seems to have 0 effect.
I removed each email account from outlook assuming i could re-import the backups i made of the .ost's which outlook made as .pst's, and it would put things back, however it did not. It was attempting to lump all the emails under the "this computer only" folder, and left me with no email accounts added to outlook.
At this point i removed the this computer only.pst and re added all my original.ost and the original this computer only.pst back to the local\microsoft\outlook folder but i opened outlook, and still no email accounts re-added, so that data seems to be saved in yet ANOTHER location.
Between all the various providers force you to configure whether it be sign in settings, root folders, subscribed folders etc... i really need to understand/fix 2 things.
1) how to take everything, my profile, my email boxes, the emails configured therein, and the settings - over to another pc.
2) (current priority) how to fix the whole "an unknown error occurred 0x80040605" when clicking on each of the emails.osts (and if it has anything to do with having the local data file separate)
For now, im off to run a restore of my system drive. Microsoft does a lot of great things, but it seems pretty terrible at UE stuff. The hot mess visual studio creates, outlooks convolution. Sigh.
Anyhow, sorry for the book - i wanted to be thorough in case anyone happens to understand this specific circumstance.
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