Determine the Personal Folders file (.pst) format - Outlook

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Determine the Personal Folders file (.pst) format

Applies to: Microsoft Office Outlook 2003

On the Tools menu, click Options.
Click Mail Setup, and then click Data Files.
Click the data file you want to check, and then click Settings.
Check the Format field to see if it contains the string Personal Folders file or Personal Folders file (97-2002). Personal Folders file indicates the new format that supports multilingual Unicode (Unicode: A character encoding standard developed by the Unicode Consortium. By using more than one byte to represent each character, Unicode enables almost all of the written languages in the world to be represented by using a single character set.) data and offers greater storage capacity for items and folders. A file with the Personal Folders file type is not compatible with earlier versions of Microsoft Outlook. Personal Folders file (97-2002) indicates the earlier format that is compatible with earlier versions of Outlook. Personal Folders file (97-2002) does not support Unicode and offers the same storage capacity for items and folders that was available in earlier versions of Outlook.