I was following the instructions on a help page to delete stuck Read
Receipts in my outbox and I clicked the wrong thing - I think it was
lpFld -< deletefolder - and deleted everything. I have a backup of
outlook.pst and archive.pst but restoring them to their proper
location isn't helping. When I open Outlook it says UNABLE TO OPEN
YOUR OUTLOOK FOLDERS. THE OPERATION CANNOT BE COMPLETED BECAUSE THE
OBJECT HAS BEEN DELETED.

Can anyone help me fix my screw-up?

You did what now? What instructions were you following and what exactly did
you do?
You never restore Outlook data by just copying files to a location. That
only corrupts your profile. You restore data by opening the file in Outlook
and setting that file as the default for the profile.
--
Russ Valentine
[MVP-Outlook]
yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:98e7b779-fd6d-45dd-a7d2-cc4f03795fb1@y38g2000hsy.googlegroups.com...

So your Outbox was deleted?

Try opening the Start, Run dialog and in that dialog typing the following,
making sure that there's a space before the switch:

outlook.exe /resetfolders

That should cause Outlook to create a new default Outbox folder. See if that
helps.

As you've no doubt learned, be very careful when using a low level tool such
as a MAPI viewer, you can do all sorts of damage if you're not careful or
don't know what you're doing.

--
Ken Slovak
[MVP - Outlook]
http://www.slovaktech.com
Author: Professional Programming Outlook 2007.
Reminder Manager, Extended Reminders, Attachment Options.
http://www.slovaktech.com/products.htm