Wow. How about you check your ego at the door?! As if you are the only
*experienced user* out there.

Apparently, you rushed to flame me before even reading my post. Did I say
that copying the .pst and importing a .pst were the same thing? No. I said
that I have done them both over a decade of using (and teaching) Outlook. I
think that this experience and countless manipulations to and with the .pst
file qualify me to post my experience as legitimate.

To say "I don't care if you think otherwise" just translates to you are
ignorant and I'm not saying that to be insulting, I'm saying that your
comments are the dictionary definition of ignorant.

How about reading the part where I told you that I did, in fact try doing
the transfer as you suggested and connecting it to the Outlook Address Book?
Then, to start your most recent message off questioning what transfer means?
What drugs are you on?!

What in the world do you mean when you suggest the I should post
*accurately*. There's nothing that I've posted that is incorrect. I
suggest that you be more careful before posting your advice, as clearly you
have trouble when people don't take it.

The bottom line is that my simple technique that I've done hundreds of times
(oh, and that Microsoft provides in the software) worked just as it should
have without having to hack my way through it as you suggest.

To suggest as proof that the fact that the numerous posts in the Outlook
groups are somehow *proof* that the import feature is flawed and not
documented as such by Microsoft is akin to me telling you to scan the .NET
newsgroups for people having trouble mananging memory in the appps and then
suggesting that the reason is that the GC mechanism in the framework is
flawed, rather than the slightly more resaonable answer is that people who
understand it and use it successfully genenerally don't post messages about
how they can't get it to work!

Geeze! Did it ever occur to you that just because someone doesn't have MVP
in thier email signature, that they still might know a thing or two (perhaps
even more than you do) about the topic?

Try standing in a proof of concept meeting and use an argument like "Your
technique is flawed. I have no technical information as to why and I don't
care if you disagree! Even though you are using the recommended proceedure
and it works reliably for you, you're wrong!".

Please!




"Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]" wrote in message
...
"The procedure for transferring?" What procedure was that? Using the
correct procedure would have worked. You mention copying and importing in
the same sentence as if they were the same thing. Hardly.
Outlook's import procedure has become so deeply flawed that should not be
used. I don't care if you think otherwise. Read the Outlook groups and let
others provide the testimony to that fact. Please be careful that you post
accurately when you post information for others to use. Microsoft has
never acknowledged the problems with its import function. Experienced
users know better.
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]
"Scott M." wrote in message
...
Russ,

In my attempts to get this working, the procedure for transferring was
tried to no avail.

The .pst file was working within the context of Outlook just fine, so
initially, there was no reason to believe that any "transfer" was
necessary. It was only when a mail merge was initiated from Word that any
hint of a problem came up (Outlook could see the contact folders, but
couldn't connect to them). If no mail merge was needed, the Outlook file
was functioning flawlessly.

I have no idea why you say that you should "never" populate a new .pst
with data from another one via the Import feature since I have been doing
this for over a decade with zero issues...ever. Also, Microsoft provides
this functionaly as a feature within the product.

Opening the two .pst's simultaneously and copying between them works, but
it's completely uneccesaary and time consuming if you want to make sure
you get all the information from all the categories without duplication
(especially calendar holidays).

FYI - In over a decade of my experiences with working with .pst's, I've
would up with .pst's that are VERY large and have all of the various
types of Outlook items within them. I've never had any issues with
copying .pst's and/or importing from them. This particular situation was
for a client of mine who had a .pst that, I'm beginning to believe had
some corruption in it to begin with.

-Scott

"Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]" wrote in message
...
Some corrections are necessary to your post. A PST file from Outlook 97
would have worked perfectly well had it been transferred correctly and
then connected correctly to the Outlook Address Book Service.
Instructions for doing so abound in the KB and in the Outlook groups.
Creating a new PST file is fine, but you would never populate it by
importing data from another PST file. You should copy data from one file
to the other while both are open in the Outlook profile.
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]
"Scott M." wrote in message
...
The problem was that an older .pst file (from Outlook 97) was copied
over for use in Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2003 could not properly make
the contacts available to Word 200 for the purposes of Mail Merge.

The soluion was to remove the old .pst and create a new .pst and then
import the old data into the new .pst.

-Scott

"Scott M." wrote in message
...
In Word 2003, during the Mail Merge wizard, my Outlook contacts are
not showing up, when Outlook is selected as the data source (BTW
Outlook 2003 as well).

The contact folder in Outlook does have its property set to act as an
address book.

Thanks