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I use two PCs running Windows 7 each with Outlook 2010 as part of the Office 2010 suite.

The Outlook PST files are stored in a Dropbox folder.

Each machine uses the same set of PST files and, so long as I give time for Dropbox to update and don't run both PCs at the same time, this works well without any conflicts.

I'm currently upgrading my PCs to Windows 10 which I understand supports Office 2010. I've upgraded one of my machines to Windows 10 but not yet run Outlook on that machine.

Does anyone know if there is any difference between the 2010 PST files on Windows 10 and Windows 7? Are the PST files specific to Outlook 2010 or does the OS affect them in any way?

My plan is to get Outlook working on the Windows 10 machine before I upgrade the other machine or should I do the two together? I'd rather do them one at a time in case there is a problem.

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Does anyone know if there is any difference between the 2010 PST files on Windows 10 and Windows 7?

No, there is no difference. The PST is generated by the Outlook application. As long you install from the same Office 2010, your PST will transfer seamlessly.

I will say though, if you plan on sharing your PST via Dropbox, you're better off using Exchange or some other hosted e-mail setup (IMAP) and keeping your e-mails on a mail server. Your setup will eventually run into problems trying to sync PST files. At best, you'll have two duplicated PST (conflicted copy), and at worse, you'll get data corruption which you'll need to fix with scanpst.

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  • Okay thanks for that. In the end I have now tried running Outlook
    – Kotch
    May 23, 2016 at 15:18
  • I have now tried running Outlook on the Win10 machine and it's all good. It seems to be working on both machines. I've been running this setup for a couple of years now and it's worked okay. I have fallen foul of the conflicted copy issue one or twice (as you can with any file on Dropbox) but generally, so long as I remember which machine last accessed the Outlook files, it's worked okay. I would switch over to Exchange but it's something I don't understand and I'd need to keep access to my existing mail archive and I don't know if that's possible.
    – Kotch
    May 23, 2016 at 15:27
  • You can import your PST to Exchange Online and have it become a searchable online archive: technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/… -- If you want to sync PST via dropbox, make sure your Outlook is fully closed (it is not running in Task Manager), and Dropbox fully synced the PST before you open Outlook on the other computer.
    – Sun
    May 23, 2016 at 15:48
  • Yes that's what I've been doing. I only open outlook on the other machine after completely closing it on the first machine and allowing the pst files to upload to the cloud. I'll investigate the exchange option though. Cheers.
    – Kotch
    May 23, 2016 at 15:51

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