# Win98/Office2000 reinstall question
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/win98-office2000-reinstall-question/91788
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [November 6, 2001, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/win98-office2000-reinstall-question/91788 "2001-11-06T15:23:21Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Palmyra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Palmyra)
#### Post date: [November 6, 2001, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/win98-office2000-reinstall-question/91788/1 "2001-11-06T15:23:21Z")
My computer has been developing some funkiness that will prolly be solved by reinstalling Windows. Getting my files off is no problem, except for one, my Outlook .pst files, where all the calender, email, etc. info is stored. On a friends computer a while back, we tried exporting the file to a disk so we could then import it once the software was reinstalled. It didn’t work because the computer crashed [and burned] while exporting and the harddrive was irretrevable.
Oh yeah, the question… would this have actually worked? Importing the file back into reinstalled software?
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### Author:  [@Palmyra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Palmyra)
#### Post date: [November 6, 2001, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/win98-office2000-reinstall-question/91788/2 "2001-11-06T17:05:41Z")
ooookay… _some_one should be able to answer this…
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### Author:  [@Athena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Athena)
#### Post date: [November 6, 2001, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/win98-office2000-reinstall-question/91788/3 "2001-11-06T17:11:48Z")
Yes, I’ve done this before and it works. You might want to export, then try to import it right away to make sure it really, really works, but I think it’s a pretty safe bet.
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### Author:  [@Palmyra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Palmyra)
#### Post date: [November 6, 2001, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/win98-office2000-reinstall-question/91788/4 "2001-11-06T17:21:36Z")
Thanks a bunch 🙂
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### Author:  [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)
#### Post date: [November 6, 2001, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/win98-office2000-reinstall-question/91788/5 "2001-11-06T23:59:37Z")
what operating system? probably not a mac, right?
anyway you can’t copy any file windows is using you must use the startup disk, start in dos, then copy the file to a floppy. course thats a guess since I don’t know the OS.
no need to reinstall, did you run all the maintenance programs?
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### Author:  [@padabe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/padabe)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2001, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/win98-office2000-reinstall-question/91788/6 "2001-11-07T01:38:23Z")
What I usually do is, after installing office and before starting Outlook, just copy the backup over the default .pst file. Assuming you _used_ the default .pst file.
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by handy \*
> \*\*what operating system? probably not a mac, right?
>
> anyway you can’t copy any file windows is using you must use the startup disk, start in dos, then copy the file to a floppy. course thats a guess since I don’t know the OS.
>
> no need to reinstall, did you run all the maintenance programs? \*\*
You’re kidding, right? 😉
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### Author:  [@DMC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMC)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2001, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/win98-office2000-reinstall-question/91788/7 "2001-11-07T01:54:29Z")
You might be best served if you follow [these](http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q195/7/19.ASP?LN=EN-US&SD=gn&FR=0&qry=backup&rnk=2&src=DHCS_MSPSS_gn_SRCH&SPR=OUT2K) directions.
An additional note. If you need to do any importing and your exported file were backed up to a CD, you’ll need to remove the read-only attribute before doing the import. While I can’t imagine why Outlook needs to write to a file to import it, it does seem to have a problem otherwise. The error message doesn’t give you any clue that that is the problem.
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### Author:  [@xash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xash)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2001, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/win98-office2000-reinstall-question/91788/8 "2001-11-07T06:18:41Z")
**DMC** is right on, esp. his take on the read only bit.
from his link :
"Microsoft has released a utility to automate the backup of your Personal Folders file. The utility can be downloaded from the following Microsoft Web site:
[http://office.microsoft.com/downloads/2000/Pfbackup.aspx](http://office.microsoft.com/downloads/2000/Pfbackup.aspx)"
also, i have seen that backing up manually works a whole lot better than using the utility.
along with the .pst file, make sure you also copy the .fav, .nick, .rwz, and .iaf so that you can also re-import all the email addresses you had created along with the folder rules ( filters ).
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### Author:  [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)
#### Post date: [November 7, 2001, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/win98-office2000-reinstall-question/91788/9 "2001-11-07T15:53:26Z")
Nope, not kidding there, I backup from dos.
Oh, I see its W98, well, to do something about the funkiness you should do a RUN:sfc & let it check your system out. Its a free program with w98.