How to Create, Change and Recover Password for Outlook PST File

Data runs everything in the world we live in. This data is everything from your online identity to your personal messages. It’s therefore important to know how to protect it from falling into the wrong hands. By the end of this article, you will be able to create, change and recover a .pst password for Outlook.

With more documents going digital every day, snail mail has almost been eradicated by emails. Millions of people around the world use Outlook to manage their emails. The items you create or receive in Outlook are saved in a personal file on your hard disk (.pst). Each Outlook account has it’s own .pst file even when they are on the same computer. Since these files are likely to contain sensitive personal or work-related information, there’s an option to secure them with a password. Let’s dive into the steps to set or change a .pst password:

1. Open Outlook. Click on the file tab and select Account settings.
2. Under Account settings, select Account settings again.
3. On the Data files tab, choose the .pst file for which you want to set or change a password. A change password dialogue box will appear. Please note that the dialogue box will not appear if you are using an exchange account.
4. If you are setting a password, type a password not more than 15 characters in the ‘new password‘ box. If you’re changing an already existing password, you will need to type it first in the ‘old password‘ box. In both cases, you will need to retype the new password in the ‘verify password‘ box
5. Click OK to save the password.

For you to have a strong password, use a mixture of uppercase and lowercase characters together with numbers or special characters. Avoid obvious passwords such as your name or date of birth. You should also ensure that your password is at least 6 characters long.

Since we have already established that a strong password should be a mixture of different types of characters, it is possible to forget it. To solve this, there’s an option for windows to manage your account passwords. This is only practical if you are the only one who uses that user account.

If you do forget the password, windows does not give you an option to recover the password manually. It would therefore take an Operating System professional to mine the password for you.  If you are not such an individual, your solace would be in dedicated recovery software like DataNumen Outlook Password Recovery. With this software, you would get the following services.

• Free to download.
• Support for all Windows versions.
• Easy to use with a friendly user interface.
• Can recover passwords for batch .pst files at a go.
• Support for command line parameters (DOS).

Now you know how to set, change and recover your .pst file password. Keep your data safe! And of course, don’t hesitate to get professional help should you be caught in a data loss situation which you are unable to resolve on your own.