Today's tip is for the Office 2003 Beta 2 users whose copies are now in reduced functionality mode. If you are using a Unicode PST, close Outlook and set your computer clock back to November (move just the month back), then create an Outlook 97/2002 PST to move your data into. Once the data is moved, close Outlook and set the month back to December. Uninstall then reinstall your older version of Outlook. (Export won't work as you can't export to a different PST format.)

Note: If you used Outlook's archiving feature, don't forget to move the data in the archives to the older PST format as well.

If you uninstalled Office 2003 before realizing the PST wouldn't work, you'll need to reinstall the beta, unless you have a friend using Outlook 2003 who is willing to move the data for you.

If you have more than 2 GB of data in a Unicode PST I recommend upgrading to Office 2003, however if an upgrade is not in the picture, you'll need to create multiple PSTs and move less than 2GB to each.

Beta 2 Refresh users have an additional 2 months of usage as it expires Jan 31, 2004. If you know you aren't upgrading, now is a good time to switch to using an Outlook97/2002 style PST so you aren't caught off guard when like so many beta 2 users were.