Microsoft Office Outlook supports password-protection for its local storage file-PST. Each time when the application tries to open the password-protected PST, it prompts a window asking for the correct password. The same goes with the PST import process. When you try to import the password-protected PST to use in MS Outlook, a dialog-box appears (sometimes twice) prompting you to enter the password. But if you have forgotten or lost the PST password, this results into a completely inaccessible file. You can either restore this file from a backup or use a PST Password Recoverysolution that can recover the lost password.

To illustrate such problems, suppose you have a password-protected PST. To access its data, you try to import it. You click File | Open | Outlook Data File and browse to the file to select it. When you click OK to finally import it within Outlook, the PST password dialog box appears. You fail to import the PST because you cannot remember or has lost the password for this file.

Cause

A PST is not specific to the owner, rather it requires the password to be opened if it is password-protected. You cannot finish the import process with a password-protected PST without specifying the correct password.

Solution

To finish the import process and regain access to the data of password-protected PST, you need to implement these suggestions:

1-You can try to recall the lost or forgotten password. If the password is saved in any file or written in any document, you can access it to import the file.

2-Microsoft provides pst19upg.exe utility that is actually meant for upgrading the PST file. But while this process, it also removes the password from PST. You can use this tool to remove the PST password, but it works in limited number of cases.

3-If none of the above measures work, it is suggested to use an Outlook Password Recovery application. These are specific tools that use safe algorithms to recover a PST password. PST Password Recovery software generally provide you a series of PST-usable passwords and an interactive user interface to work with.

Stellar Phoenix Outlook Password Recovery v1.1 is a powerful solution that recovers lost or forgotten PST passwords. The advanced Outlook Password Recovery tool generates multiple PST passwords, each of which is usable to open the password-locked PST. The software supports MS Outlook 2007, 2003, 2002, and 2000.