Outlook Not Receiving Emails After a PST Change Fix the Delivery Location

Classic Outlook does not deliver new POP mail to "the Inbox" in the abstract. It delivers to the Inbox of one specific data file - the delivery location. When you add a new PST, move to a fresh file, or restore a backup file, Outlook can quietly start treating that file as the delivery home. Nothing is broken and nothing is deleted. Outlook is doing exactly what it was told; it is just filing your new mail into a file you are not looking at.

Two minutes of checking will save you hours of wrong fixes:

1. Open your mailbox in a browser (webmail) and confirm new mail is reaching the server at all
2. In Outlook, look at the folder pane and expand every data file listed, not just your usual one
3. Check the Inbox of the other PST - in most of these cases your "missing" mail is sitting there, unread and complete
4. If the mail is in the other Inbox, stop troubleshooting the server. Your problem is delivery location, and the next three cards fix it

1. Click File, then Account Settings, then Account Settings again
2. Open the Data Files tab
3. The file with the tick and the word Default beside it is where account delivery points by default
4. Note each file name and its location - a typical path looks like C:\Users\YourName\Documents\Outlook Files\archive.pst
5. If the default is the new or wrong file, you have found your culprit

1. Stay on the Data Files tab and select the PST that holds the Inbox you actually use
2. Click Set as Default and confirm the tick moves to that file
3. Close Outlook completely and open it again - delivery changes do not take effect while Outlook keeps running
4. This one change fixes the majority of "not receiving after a PST change" cases

Setting the default fixes most profiles. If your account still delivers elsewhere - common when several POP accounts share one profile - set the account directly:

1. Open Account Settings and stay on the E-mail tab
2. Select the POP account that is not receiving
3. Click Change Folder near the bottom of the window
4. Expand the correct data file, select its Inbox, and click OK
5. Close the dialogs, restart Outlook, and test

1. From your phone or webmail - not from Outlook itself - send a mail to this account
2. In Outlook, click Send/Receive, then Send/Receive All Folders
3. Watch the mail arrive in the Inbox of the file you chose
4. Only when a real outside mail lands in the right place is the fix proven

Everything that arrived during the broken period is safe inside the other file - it just needs moving:

1. Open the Inbox of the wrong file and sort by Received date
2. Select the stranded mails (click the first, then Shift-click the last)
3. Drag them onto the Inbox of your real file, or right-click and use Move
4. Keep the wrong PST file on disk until you are certain nothing else lives in it - it may also hold contacts or calendar items

Then this was not your problem, and it is honest to say so. The next suspects, in order, are: a Send/Receive error you have not read yet (run Send/Receive and open the progress details), a rule quietly filing mail away, the Work Offline button switched on, or a server-side issue your webmail check will reveal. Each of those has its own guide in this series - work them in that order instead of reinstalling Outlook, which fixes none of them.