Along with what Vince said, do you remove the old "Inbox" when you make a
new one? Do you have all the old pst's in the folder list? If so, drag the
contacts from all of the Contacts folders to the new one. Then configure
Autoarchiving to keep the pst manageable. You only need a new pst when you
upgrade to a new version of Outlook (psts from old versions work, but its
better to make a new one).

One well known author of Office and Outlook books recommends making a new
PST yearly to ward off problems with the PST. This is bad advice - it’s a
useless waste of time and causes users to lose a lot of hidden data.
Archiving (either using autoarchive or just by dragging the messages to a
new archive pst) is a much better solution to clean up the pst.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]
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"outlooking in los angeles"
m wrote in message
...
I am using Outlook 2003, Windows XP pro. I just created a new inbox
because
my old one was over 2 gigs and starting to have some issues. When I
created
the new inbox, one of my contacts files (with many distribution lists)
disappeared. I have several inboxes from different years and I keep them
because I have many distribution lists. Unfortunately, each time I create
a
new inbox, a new contacts file is also created so it gets confusing when I
try to find distribution lists to send out mass emails. The main problem
is
finding the missing distribution lists that are contained in the missing
contacts file. Secondary to that, is managing all of the contacts files.
There are thousands of addresses and hundreds of groups. Help!