How to Find an Outlook Contacts File

Techwalla may earn compensation through affiliate links in this story. Learn more about our affiliate and product review process here.
Image Credit: Polka Dot RF/Polka Dot/Getty Images

Microsoft Outlook is an email client included with the Office Suite of applications for Windows. When you use Outlook, the operating system saves your files in the "Documents and Settings" directory for your user name. This directory saves some user-specific configurations, including the contact files used in your Outlook installation. Each Outlook file can be identified by its extension. Contacts are saved with the ".pab" file extension.

Advertisement

Step 1

Double-click the "My Computer" icon on the desktop. If you have Vista, the icon is labeled "Computer." This opens an Explorer window.

Video of the Day

Step 2

Navigate to the "C:\Documents and Settings<user>\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook" directory. Replace "" with your user name logged into the machine.

Advertisement

Step 3

Locate the file with the ".pab" extension. This extension stands for "personal address book." This is the file that contains your Outlook contacts.

Advertisement

Step 4

Click the Windows Start button and select "Search." Enter "*.pab" into the search text box. This searches your entire hard drive for all locations of any file with the personal address book extension. This is a secondary method to find contact files in case your Outlook settings save the pab file in a different location.

Video of the Day

Advertisement

Advertisement

references

Report an Issue

screenshot of the current page

Screenshot loading...