I have seen this problem posted here but there was no solution posted for it then so I am going to post it again. I switched jobs and I wanted to bring my outlook pst file with me. At my old job I had Win2K with Office2K. Now I have WinXP with OfficeXP. I copied the file from the cdrom to my desktop. I cleared the read only checkbox. I went to outlook to file open and when I select the file it says "The file C:\.pst is not a valid pst file" I have tried going back to win2k o2k machine and I still get the same error. This info is very important so I need it. Has anyone had this problem or know a solution. I will be very grateful!!

Instead of opening the pst file from within Outlook, add the old pst as a data file. If you need help with this, just email me..

Hi Jennifer, Thanks for your response. I have tried opening it from outlook, adding as a data file, and importing it. I get the same error for all 3.

Are you going to import then selecting .pst file? I have just done the same thing a couple of weeks ago and had no problems http://www.appliedlanguage.com/

Yes, I am postitive I am doing everything correctly. The only thing I can think of is both my pst files got corrupted burning them to the CD. Which I think is unlikly because I have done it many times before for other people and they had no problems. I think it has something to do with MS Exchange. They were different networks and it worked fine on the other one. So I suspect that there is some kind of signature written to the pst file when it is created in an MS Exchange environment. Then when you try to open the file in a different Exchange environment it can't open the file. From everything I have read on MS site they say this is not the case but I am just a little suspicious. Anyway, thank you both for your help!

I had the same problem. I found your query online and I decided to play around with the file beyond unclicking Read-only. When I unclicked Read-only and then clicked Archive, Outlook then allowed me to open the file as an archive folder.