August-15-2010
How to read saved outlook email when email server (exchange) is down?
Filed Under (Software) by admin

When the exchange server is down, Outlook on my PC won’t start and gives this error “Cannot start Microsoft Office Outlook. Unable to open the Outlook window. The set of folders could not be opened.” I have lots of stored email, not to mention a stored calendar, but now I can’t view any of it because outlook won’t even start. How can I read my stored email?

(This is not a PC issue. Outlook has been working for a year perfect. I’m talking about literally when exchange is down, outlook just won’t start. When exchange comes back up, outlook works perfectly.)
NO. Please read carefully. I have SAVED email in LOCAL PST FOLDERS. When exchange is down, outlook will not start. Therefore I can not read my locally saved files. I’m 100% certain of this. I’m asking either a) how can I get outlook to start without requiring exchange to be running, or b) what other tool can I use to read outlook’s LOCAL PST folders.
Sorry that I wasn’t clear in my original question. I meant to specify “stored locally on my PC” but missed that in my preview.

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(2) Comments    Read More


Comments
SteveZman on August 16th, 2010 at 8:57 am #

on exchange your mail is stored on the exchange server, so if its down so is your mail. you could setup a pst folder and haver your mail delivered there but i wouldn’t recommend that. your exchange probably gets backed up, your PC probably doesn’t

Jeremie I on August 17th, 2010 at 1:11 am #

The problem your experiencing is caused by the fact that everything you have in outlook is in your mail store mailbox on the Exchange Server. It like trying to watch a TV channel when the station is off the air, just cant happen.
You can archive email into a separate location on a server drive, but make sure that it is backed up regularly. It will create a PST file that can be opened in outlook and it will look just like the personal folder list you have in the left Outlook pane. The archive can be accessed so long as the server it resides upon is not offline.
As for accessing the files while the server is not on line, you will not be able to.

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