As one of the most widely used applications worldwide, Microsoft Outlook is renowned for its smart email services and data management. Millions of users rely on Outlook for personal and professional communication, so it is important to safeguard your account with a strong password. However, it’s very common to forget your Outlook password, resulting in restricted access to your emails. If you find yourself in this situation, then no need to worry. In this guide, we will help you to get effective methods to retrieve Outlook passwords.
Without a password, one can’t read the PST file or can’t access its data. Microsoft won’t provide any way of retrieving lost or misplaced passwords. In this case, only third-party password retrieval tools can help you.
Outlook File Location
Before moving ahead, it is important to know the location of the Outlook data file.
- Open the Mail option from Control Panel.
- Go to the Data Files button and this will open the window of Account Settings.
- See your Outlook data file in the Data Files tab. In the case of multiple accounts, you will notice many data files.
- Choose the password-protected PST file and hit on the Open Folder button to open the folder having the PST file in Windows Explorer.
How to Change Outlook File Password?
As we said, there can be two scenarios for Outlook data file password retrieval. One is when users know the old password and the other is when they don’t know the password. Let us discuss both scenarios:
Change PST Password when the old Password is known
Changing Outlook file password is simple when you know the old password. Let us look at the steps:
- Start by opening MS Outlook
- Go to File tab and then click on Account Settings twice
- In the opened Account Settings dialogue box, hit the Data Files tab. Choose your Outlook PST file and hit Settings.
- In the Outlook data file dialogue box, hit on Change password.
- Create a new password in change password dialogue box. Enter the old password and then provide the desired new password. Then, hit OK.
Also Read:- Convert Outlook Ansi to Unicode PST file
For Outlook 2003 & previous versions, there are inbuilt applications named scanPST.exe and pst19upg.exe to remove Outlook file password.
- Install both scanpst.exe and pst19upg.exe applications
- Perform scan and repair on PST file with the help of scanpst.exe application.
- Execute this command by opening Command prompt:
C:\backup\pst19upg.exe -x C:\backup\outlook-copy.pst
Here, C:\backup is the location of pst19upg.exe.
- Run the below command to make the PST file password free at the same location:
C:\backup\pst19upg.exe -i C:\backup\outlook-copy.psx
- Now, repair this newly created PST file.
- Copy this PST file to the location of the original PST file.
- Now, your PST file is password-free and you can access in MS Outlook application.
How to Retrieve Outlook data file Password if you Forget or Lost it?
Many times Outlook users forget Outlook file password and when they try to access the file, they get a notification that the password is incorrect.
To access the emails, users have to unlock password protection which can be done using Softaken PST Password Retrieve Software. This is a highly known solution to retrieve forgotten Outlook passwords in a few clicks. Also, this software provides you the option to change the password.
Some Essential Features of the Software are:
- Simple interface to easily use by non-technical users
- Instant password recovery without losing any data
- Easily retrieve highly encrypted PST files
- Allow resetting & removing PST password
- No MS Outlook installation for retrieving PST password
- High-level compatibility with all Outlook and Windows versions
Understand How does the Software Work for Password Retrieval:
- Install and open the software by successfully downloading it.
- Browse the PST file or PST folder which you need to recover.
- Pick the option ‘Remove password’. Or, you can choose ‘Reset password’ in case of password change.
- Finally, hit the ‘Process’ button.
Conclusion
In this post, users find the manual process of retrieve Outlook Password, which is useful only when users know the old password. For recovery lost or forgotten PST passwords, use the third-party software explained above. We hope this post has helped you to get all the answers to retrieve Outlook file password.