How to find the location of .PST File in Microsoft Outlook ?

Microsoft Outlook PST file is the Personal Storage Table or Personal Folder File in Outlook. This is represented with the .pst extension. A PST file is located on your local computer. The significance of Outlook PST file can be understood from the fact that it stores all Outlook Objects like emails, tasks, contacts, notes, calendar entries, journals, attachments etc. The PST file has complex structure. So if anything wrong happened with this file like file corruption, you could lose your entire data.

When Outlook is working fine, users don't bother to know so much about the PST file and its location. But as and when Outlook starts showing error messages due to .pst file corruption then it becomes necessary to find where this problematic file is stored.

Locations of PST file in different operating systems:

By default the location of .pst file is:

C:\Documents and Settings\user_id\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

However, the location of .pst file could be different according to the Operating system that you are using. These are explained as below:

•  Windows 8:

 drive:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook

 or

 drive:\Users\<username>\Roaming\Local\Microsoft\Outlook

• Windows 7 and Windows Vista:

C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook

• Windows XP and 2000:

C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

• Windows 98/ ME:

\Windows\Application Data (without individual login)

\Windows\Profiles\<user name>\Application Data (with individual login)

\Windows\Profiles\<user name>\Local Settings\Application Data (with individual login)