How do I upgrade my Outlook PST

If you are using Microsoft Outlook for your email account or calendar, you have no doubt dealt with some of the annoying PST Files that can happen to the program. Unfortunately Microsoft is known for releasing their products early, which leaves corrupt and damaged files to occur in the future. If you don't set your Microsoft programs to download software updates, the PST file damage message can happen to you and it can cause you to be locked out of your email account. For anyone in the business field that depends upon their email account, they do not have time do deal with a broken down email account. You will need to repair your PST files in order to access them again and to prevent future corruption and problems from occurring.

Upgrading my Outlook PST
When you upgrade your Outlook, it does not automatically upgrade your PST format. Unfortunately upgrading your PST is not an easy process. Your best option is to ask an IT professional to give you a hand with the upgrade as they have probably done it a few times. The best way to upgrade your PST is to save all of your PST files into a folder so you don't lose anything. Your primary PST is going to be difficult because this is where all of your important information is like your calendar, contacts, and your email inbox.

Here is the process you need to follow:

1. Open Outlook and click on `Folder' view.

2. Click on the `File' menu and click on `New' and then `Outlook Data File'.

3. When you are here you will need to click on `Office Outlook Personal Folders File (.pst)' for your storage type.

4. Now you need to take that file and drag it to your hard drive to replace your Primary PST folder. You should give it a different name like `New PST' so you can find it again.

5. Once you have done this you need to select `Compressible Encryption'

6. Now you can exit outlook and then click `Swap' for the filenames so the two PST files have been transferred. To do this you need to locate the two PST files on your hard drive and rename the old one so you don't accidently try to use it.

7. After you have successfully completed this step, you then need to restart outlook and your new primary PST folder will appear. You can then prioritize your old PST files by creating a new folder to drag them into.

As you can see it is a fairly complex process to upgrade your PST files. While you may think you are done at this point, you still have a few other things to deal with. Now that you have completed the PST transfer, you need to follow a few more steps to make sure everything has been copied over:

• Start with your Inbox. When you upgrade your PST your inbox will appear empty. This is because all of your old files will be in the old inbox. You need to copy over all the old files to your new PST. Unfortunately you will have to copy each file individually so you should pick and choose which ones you really need to have in your new inbox.
  
• Outbox or Sent Items folder. Now that you have fixed your inbox, you need to fix your outbox. You have to individually copy each file. Go back for at least one week or only copy over the files that are truly pressing like files sent to important clients or employees.
  
• Your contacts need to be copied over. Since you probably have a long list of contacts, this is an important folder to copy over. Using your old PSt file, click on `View' and then `Arrange By' and `Current View'. Now you need to click on `List' and select all of your contacts and hit the CTRL + A key to easily drag and drop your contacts into your new PST file.
  
• Finally you need to copy over your calendar. Head back into your old PST folder and click on `View' and `Arrange By' and `Current View' then you need to click on `list'. Just like your contacts, you are going to highlight the list and hit `CTRL + A' and drag and drop your files into the new calendar.