Access denied to Outlook 2003 pst file

[FalvinP]

I’m going to be reformatting and reinstalling Vista home premium. I use Outlook 2003 for email. In doing research to retain my cuurent Outlook.pst file, I did something, although I don’t know what I did.

When I open Outlook 2003 I get this message:

“Unable to open your default email folders. File access is denied. You do not have the permission required to access the file:

C:\users\Fred\Appdata\Local\Miscrosoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst”

I can’t open Outlook 2003 at all, even if I try to open it as administrator.

As I live alone, and am the only person who uses this computer, my computer is set up without having to log in. No other accounts have been created, other than those created at installation.

I tried to get access back by going to the Outlook.pst file and right clicking to properties. I then chose the security tab.

There are three groups or usernames shown there:

SYSTEM
Fred (Fred-PC\Fred)
Administrators (Fred-PC\Administrators)

Every level of permissions (Full control, Modify, Read and execute, read, write, Special permissions) are checked in the “allow” column except for special permissions. They are grayed out on this screen. When I click “edit” the checkmarks are still grayed out in the “allow” column. I can click the “deny” column and put a check back into the “accept” column, but I didn’t apply any changes for fear of messing things up further.

I do have a full backup of my hard drive, done yesterday, that I made with Easy Gig II. I could restore the pst file from there, but I don’t know if that would allow me to reuse that file.

Can anyone show me how to get back to where I was?

Your help is greatly appreciated.

[mikeL]

Maybe this will help.

http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-111...sageID=2475184

[FalvinP]

I have my problem solved. Thanks for the above link. It was very informative, but I hadn't had time to digest it fully. I decided to just google the error message and found this:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/258468

I looked at the outlook.pst file properties and discovered that I must have accidentally clicked the "read only" attribute by mistake. Unchecking that box solved the problem immediately.

Thanks to all who helped me with this.