How to Kill Outlook Before Backing Up Your PST file

I use Cobian Backup to automatically backup my Outlook mail file (i.e. PST file) as well as other types of files. There is a catch with backing up PST files with Cobian Backup — Outlook cannot be running. If Outlook is running, Cobian will not backup the PST file because it will be locked by Outlook.

Luckily, Cobian has a feature called “events”, which can be used to run arbitrary tasks before and/or after a backup job. I use this feature to kill Outlook before running my backup job, which removes the file lock and allows Cobian to backup the PST file.

If you want to use this feature to kill Outlook, the first step is to create a batch file that can kill Outlook from the command line. I called my batch file “kill_outlook.bat”. Here are the contents:

taskkill /f /im outlook.exe

The taskkill command is available on Windows XP Pro and, I believe, also Windows XP Home and Windows Server 2003. On Windows 2000, instead of taskkill, you need to use kill, which is not included on the Windows 2000 install disk. To get kill, you must install the Windows 2000 Support Tools.

After you make the batch file and test it, you need to configure a “before backup” event in Cobian. Open your backup job configuration and go to the Events tab. Under the “Before Backup” box, press the “Add” button and click “Execute and wait” on the popup menu. In the file browser dialog that appears, browse to and select the batch file you just created. Then click OK. Finally, click OK on the job properties dialog and you are done!

Good luck!