It seems the personal address book and the contacts folder are quite different things: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/books/homeandofficeuser/tips/050102.asp says "You might decide to add a personal address book (PAB) to store addresses outside your Contacts folder. For example, you might use the PAB to store personal addresses separately from work addresses."

Somewhat half way down that same page is an instruction on how to import the Outlook Express address book into the personal address book in Outlook. It's a File>Import, but the location of the Outlook address book matters a lot.

Read through http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;196492 or http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=290827 for information backup, restore and move Outlook data. Do it regularly or backup the whole pst-file as part of your regular grand-scale backup.

Hope this helps.


Kees