Outlook 2007 requires Personal Folders.pst be on desktop or throws an error message

Greetings...newbie here.
I have been using M/Soft Office 2007 Outlook email / POP3 (don't laugh) for years, never had a hiccup from it. Works great in W11 Pro. When booting it, I now get the message as follows:
"C:\ users\rober\Desktop\Personal Folders(1).pst cannot be found.

This started when I made an Outlook 2007 backup of the address book and I think I saved the backup file to my desktop, thinking I would properly file it later. IF I remember right.
I later moved this .pst backup file into my backup drive (off computer) and now Outlook is complaining with the above message whenever I start it. Long as that file is located on my desktop Outlook is happy. Outlook still works fine, but it takes about 4 mouse-clicks to shut it up and that gets annoying fast.
Any suggestions?
I tried web-searching but everything was unhelpful.
Thanks in advance....

Hey, thanks John, I'll check it out.

Ranchhand said:

"C:\ users\rober\Desktop\Personal Folders(1).pst cannot be found.

Click to expand...

Robert,

I also use MSOffice Outlook 2007 with pop3 email.
All you have to do is tell it to close that Personal Folders(1).pst file that you had open when doing your backup.
You'll need to do the same whenever you have had a pst file open temporarily.

It's only two steps but I've laboured each point on the assumption that you have not done a similar task before.

1 Go to the Navigation pane [the left hand pane], click on the Folder list view [using the icons shown at the bottom of the Nav pane].
Each of the open pst files will be shown as a top level item [just like a File explorer folder hierarchy - you can see the +/- boxes of my four pst files just poking out on the left of my first diagram].
Right click on each one in turn, select Properties, select Advanced.
The Filename box will tell you the path & filename of that pst file - as shown in my first diagram.
Then press Escape a couple of times to get rid of those Properties dialog boxes so you can check the next one.

2 When you've found the right one & escaped out of its dialog boxes, right-click on it again and choose Close ... - this is shown in my second diagram.

Job done.
You can now set the Navigation pane back to however you normally like to see it [personally, I always set it to 'Shortcut view'].






Any questions? Or any more-detailed guidance required?


Denis

Thanks Denis, haven't had time to deal with it yet, but will this week. I will let you know what happens.

Ranchhand said:

I will let you know what happens

Click to expand...

Great.

While we're talking, you might not know that it's easy to relocate your pst file(s) to wherever you wish. Mine, just for example, is within my Documents folders so it gets included in all my routine backups. I can explain how to do it if you are interested.


Denis

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Hello Denis/Try3, my sincere apologies for the late response, family emergency happened.
Unfortunately, I can't find the same screens you have. I randomly selected a file with the + sign ("journel") and that is where I draw a blank, nothing resembles your pictures. At this point, I have a folder on my desktop, personal folders (1).pst and Outlook seems happy with that, but I would like to get things back to normal.
I tried creating a new .pst folder saved to the path as follows, but that didn't help, nothing changed.
c>Users>rober>AppData>Local\Microsoft>Outlook>Outlook.pst
I am probably not understanding correctly, sorry…

Ranchhand said:

I randomly selected a file

Click to expand...

No, you selected a folder. You were supposed to select each top-level folder [so that you were, in effect, selecting the whole file].
Yours is shown in your diagram as Personal folders.


You can see the folders within this file are indented, just like subfolders in File explorer.

You also have a second pst file open, the Archive folders shown at the bottom of your list.

I think you will have to scroll further down your nav pane, the scrollbar shows that you are only about halfway down. I think the unwanted one is down in the area we cannot see in your diagram.

Ranchhand said:

I tried creating a new .pst folder

Click to expand...

No, you tried creating a new pst file.
We might have to talk about that later. The file you tried creating is the default location & name of the pst file Outlook creates when you start using it.

A delay in replying is never a problem.


Denis