PST Password Lost after Reformatting the Hard Drive

Microsoft Outlook uses a Personal Folders Storage (.pst) file to store all the incoming and outgoing e-mails, notes, contacts etc. when using a POP3 or IMAP account. Since Outlook is generally used for business purposes, it can contain confidential and important e-mail messages. To prevent its unauthorized access, Outlook allows implementing password protection. Once you set a password for Outlook PST, it cannot open without entering the password. Outlook also includes '‘Save this password in your password list’ option that if selected provides the ability to store the password in the password-list. But if you forget or lose this password when the password is not saved in the list, you need a PST Password Recovery solution.

As an illustration of such problems, you can consider a realistic problem discussed below:

(1) You enforce password protection for your Outlook PST that contains important e-mail messages.

(2) To prevent entering the password at each attempt of opening the PST, you select the ‘Save this password in your password list’ option. Consequently, you cannot remember the password, which was originally set.

(3) For some reasons, you require to reformat the hard drive. So, you backup the Outlook PST without removing the password protection.

(4) After you restore PST, you cannot access it because you cannot recall the password.

You cannot open the password-protected PST since the computer doesn't retain the password list after hard disk formatting. The list has been refreshed. Also, you cannot recollect the password, so check if a copy of the password is stored somewhere. If not, you should carry on with the steps described later.

To regain access to PST data, you can implement solutions like:

(1) Check if a backup of PST is available. If it is, restore the data.

(2) Download pst19upg.exe, unzip it and put in the same folder in which PST resides. Run the utility using command prompt. Use pst19upg.exe -x filename.pst and pst19upg.exe -i filename.psx commands.

(3) Use a third-party Password Recovery utility. These are specific applications built for recovering Lost PST Password. The tools are easy to install and operate with self-explaining steps.

Stellar Phoenix Outlook Password Recovery is an efficient utility that recovers lost or forgotten Outlook PST passwords. The PST Password Recovery tool supports MS Outlook 2007, 2003, 2002, and 2000. The software allows to save the recovered password list in any text-editor or word-processor file. The tool recovers a series (precisely six) of PST-usable passwords.