Downloaded Outlook 365 to a new hard drive and my people disappeared

Question

I had a new hard drive installed on my computer. When I downloaded and opened Outlook 365 all of my emails appeared but none of my people (contacts) are shown when I go to the "People" interface. The contacts were not saved in a pst file on the old drive, so I assume that they are in the cloud. How do I get them?

Answer 1

If you use Gmail for you email and you use classic Outlook to access the mailbox, then you are almost certainly using an IMAP account. In that case, given that you replaced the hard drive without saving your contacts, you've lost them permanently. You'll have to re-add them manually because they were stored on the old hard drive in a file whose extension is .OST which is under the %AppData% folder. However, classic Outlook can't just add that OST for accessing. If you still have access to your old drive and can mount it on your computer still, there are paid tools (and there could be a free one, but I'm not aware of any) that can convert that OST to a PST to allow you access.

Answer 2

Hi. I'm Brian and I'll try to help.

Who is your mail provider - that is, what follows the @ in your address? What type of account are you using? POP, IMAP or Exchange? With Exchange, your contacts are in the cloud, but for POP and IMAP, your contacts are local to the computer where they're stored. They are not shared. With POP, they'll be in the PST used as the default data file. For IMAP, they're stored in the OST used as the cache for the mailbox in a folder labeled "This computer only" and can be transferred to another computer by adding a PST and copying the Contacts folder to that PST, then adding that PST to the new Outlook instance.

Answer 3

If your emails are syncing but your contacts are missing, the first thing to check is whether you're signed in with the same Microsoft account that originally stored your contacts.

In Outlook on the web (https://outlook.live.com/people), check whether your contacts appear there. If they do, the contacts are still stored in your Microsoft account, and you may need to refresh or reconnect the People module in Classic Outlook.

If your contacts do not appear on Outlook on the web, they may have been stored only in a local Contacts folder or a separate data file on your previous drive. If you still have access to the old drive or a backup, check for PST or OST files that may contain your contacts.

Also verify that Outlook is displaying the correct Contacts folder by going to the People view and ensuring the appropriate contact list is selected.

If none of these steps restore your contacts, please let us know:

• Are you using an Outlook.com, Microsoft 365, Gmail, or another type of account?
• Do your contacts appear at https://outlook.live.com/people?
• Do you still have access to the old hard drive or a backup?

That information will help determine whether the contacts are stored in the cloud or need to be recovered from a local data file.