Its simple to restore data and recover Outlook contacts and emails.

A former freelance contributor who has reviewed hundreds of email programs and services since 1997.

Outlook stores emails, address book entries, and other data in a PST (Outlook Personal Information Store) file.

If you made a backup of the PST file or need information from a different PST file, restore it through Outlook.

If you have a backup copy of a PST file and want to restore the data in the PST file, import the backup PST file.

You can use this backup PST file to restore the Outlook data to the same computer, to a different computer, or to a different email account.

Choose Import from another program or file, then select Next.

Choose either Outlook Data File (.pst) or Personal Folder File (PST) depending on the version of Outlook you use, then select Next.

Select Browse to find and select the PST file that you want to import data from.

Allow duplicates to be created: Imports all data and creates a duplicate of items that are the same.

Every email and contact is imported even if these items are in the existing PST file.

Select the folder to import from (optional), whether to Include subfolders, and where to import.

If you want to restore a PST file into Outlook and use it as another data file, add the PST file as a second account along with the default one.

Select the location of the PST, choose the file name, then select OK.

Highlight the PST file and select Set as Default to make it the new default data file.

Outlook For Mac Create Outlook Data File Pst