How to Find Your PST Files in Microsoft Outlook 2007 and 2010

Melanie Gross
Dec 13, 2011
Updated • Nov 29, 2012
Email, Microsoft Outlook
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Outlook stores your email in a PST file. PST stands for personal storage table. Outlook uses this file format to store your data including emails, contacts, calendars, etc. Depending on your settings, you may need to use your password to open them and they may or may not be encrypted. Most likely, if you did not encrypt them, they are not encrypted unless some gremlins crawled up into your CPU. Now that may be fine, but sometimes trying to figure out where the PST files actually are can be confusing. “Where are my PST files?” screams the frustrated user. There is no need to fret! It is just a matter of finding where the file is located. This should help you find the location of the file and finally recovery your PST files.

Open Outlook and see what you always see: an interface. Brilliant, now where are the PST files? There are two ways to find them and it is very simple. In Outlook 2010, open the File menu and click Account Settings. In Outlook 2007, click the Tools tab and select Account Settings.

outlook pst files

This will open a window with various tabs that help you organize your Outlook content. Click the Data Files tab and you will see your Outlook data files, including PST and OST files. They will be clearly indicated by name. Highlight the PST file listing and then click Open Folder just above the list.

outlook data files

Your PST files are saved in your User Data folder by default and this is the folder location that will open. Simply double click the listing for your PST files and there they are.

Alternatively, you can open your PST files directly from the User Data folder without opening Outlook. Open Windows Explorer and in the address bar, type:

%localappdata%\Microsoft\Outlook\

outlook directory

Press Enter and the folder will open. Once again, simply double click your PST files and they should open. If this leads you to a read-only file that you cannot open, right-click the file and select Properties. Under the security tab, you can make sure that you have allowed all permissions for the user account. The default account is often the SYSTEM user and permissions are restricted.
Click the edit button to define permissions for certain users, select which account you are using and all permissions. Click Apply and restart your system.
At that point, you can try the above steps again and it should work out. If this all seems like too much to bother with, there a applications that will find the PST files for you, but it is just as easy to try this first.

Other troubleshooting issues may be inactive services with Outlook and Windows Live. This can also cause problems accessing PST files. Check to make sure that all services associated with these programs are enabled and active.
Normally, you should not have any trouble retrieving the PST files from Outlook. If you continue to have problems retrieving PST files from outlook, also check for firewall issues.

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Comments

  1. JMGG said on January 19, 2012 at 8:25 am
    Reply

    You said that Outlook isn’t your main email client, so which is your main one?

    1. BalaC said on January 19, 2012 at 9:42 am
      Reply

      I think its thunderbird

    2. Martin Brinkmann said on January 19, 2012 at 10:15 am
      Reply

      It is Mozilla Thunderbird.

  2. Salaam said on September 24, 2012 at 9:52 pm
    Reply

    Awesome! This actually solved my problem… what a stupid bug.

  3. Claud said on December 19, 2012 at 2:08 am
    Reply

    If this is the same bug that I’ve encountered, there may be another fix: (1) hover over open Outlook item in Taskbar, cursor up to hover over Outlook window item, and right-click; (2) this should give you Restore / Move / Size / Minimize / Maximize — choose Move or Size; (3) use your cursor keys, going arbitrarily N/S/E/W, to try to move or size the Outlook window back into view. Basically, the app behaves as though it were open in a 0x0 window, or at a location that’s offscreen, and this will frequently work to resize and/or move the window. Don’t forget to close while resized/moved, so that Outlook remembers the size/position for next time.

    1. Lynda said on February 12, 2013 at 3:37 pm
      Reply

      THANK YOU Claude!!! I could get the main window to launch but could not get any other message window to show on the desktop. You are my hero!!!!

    2. Chad said on November 20, 2018 at 4:24 pm
      Reply

      Solved my issue! 6 years later and this is still problem…

    3. Ivan X said on January 21, 2021 at 4:50 pm
      Reply

      Fantastic. Thank you. Size did the trick.

  4. Andrew said on October 26, 2013 at 7:06 am
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    This solved my Outlook problem, too. Thank you. :)

  5. Charles said on December 7, 2013 at 7:23 pm
    Reply

    Thank you so much, this started happening to me today and was causing big problems. You are a life saver, I hope I can help you in some way some day.

  6. garth said on November 7, 2014 at 7:13 pm
    Reply

    You are a god – thank you!

  7. Faisal said on February 9, 2015 at 10:09 am
    Reply

    thanks a lot…. work like charm.. :-)

  8. Simon said on March 24, 2015 at 11:36 pm
    Reply

    Yah…thanks Claude. I’ve been having the same problem and tried all the suggestions…your solution was the answer. It had resized itself to a 0/0 box. Cheers

  9. Olu said on April 14, 2015 at 1:35 pm
    Reply

    Excellent post. This had me baffled even trying to accurately describe the problem. This fixed it for me.
    Thank you

  10. Coenig said on July 23, 2015 at 7:36 am
    Reply

    Thanks a lot for the article. Don’t know why it happenend, don’t know how it got fixed, but it was really annoying and now it works :-)

  11. Fali said on January 20, 2016 at 4:19 pm
    Reply

    Thanks a lot. I was facing this issue from past 3 week. I tried everything but no resolution. The issue was happening intermittently and mainly when I was changing the display of screen ( as i use 2 monitors). The only option i had was to do system restore. But thanks to you.

    1. MIki said on January 10, 2019 at 11:54 am
      Reply

      I’ve been tried to sole this problem for 12hours. Your comment about changing the display of screen helped me a lot!! Thanks!!

  12. Christina said on January 20, 2016 at 6:14 pm
    Reply

    Thank you…don’t know why this happened but your instructions helped me fix it. Running Windows 10 and office pro 2007

  13. Oz said on July 22, 2016 at 3:20 pm
    Reply

    Great tip! Thanks!

  14. Tracy said on September 1, 2016 at 4:48 pm
    Reply

    Worked for me, too – thank you!!!

  15. shawn said on September 9, 2016 at 10:25 am
    Reply

    It’s Worked for me, too
    thank you very much!

  16. Jari said on October 31, 2016 at 11:53 am
    Reply

    I had a similar issue with Outlook 2013 on Windows 10 and this helped me to fix it. Thank you very much!

  17. Michel H said on November 30, 2016 at 11:08 pm
    Reply

    Thank you so much. Solved!
    Considering you published this in 2012, incredible not been debugged by Microsoft.
    Thank you again. M

  18. Ziad Bitar said on January 9, 2017 at 2:00 am
    Reply

    This problem was faced by only one user logging to TS 2008 r2 using outlook 2010.The issue was resolved.

    Thanks.

  19. Anonymous said on February 15, 2017 at 5:24 pm
    Reply

    Great tip. Thank you!!!! If it helps, I had to use the Control Key and the arrow keys at the same time to bring my window back into view. Worked like a charm.

  20. Rochelle said on March 6, 2017 at 11:59 am
    Reply

    Thank you, this worked !!!!

  21. anom1234 said on May 20, 2018 at 11:20 pm
    Reply

    Man, you are a fucking god. Thanks a lot, what an annoying bug!!

  22. JC said on October 12, 2020 at 2:14 pm
    Reply

    Awesome, this post solved the issue. Many thanks!

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