Ways to repair corrupt PST file in MS Outlook

MS Outlook email client stores entire data in PST (Personal Storage Table) file system. PST files contain email, related properties, contacts, calendar entries, notes, journals, attachment and everything else contained in the user mailbox. Just like any other files on the system, PST files are also prone to damage under various physical and logical situations.

Errors like MS Outlook malfunction, accidental user mailbox deletion, hardware crash, server crash issues, PST files exceeding the size limit of 2GB, virus attack or malicious web content download not only corrupt the inbox but damages PST files as well. In the technical age, emails contain important transaction details, information, contact details and everything else that could be counted important.

Losing crucial information from the emails is one of the most severe threats to entire organization. Performing fast and effective recovery is of the foremost importance. There are many inbuilt tools provided by Microsoft to tackle such mishaps.

Scanpst.exe is the inbox repair tool used to validate and correct complete errors related with PST files. It corrects the internal structure of PST file. Scanpst.exe finds specific block or table is unreadable or corrupt and removes it as soon as possible. You just need to find the executable file and run it. Depending on the operating system you are using, you may find the file in following locations:

Windows 7 or Windows Vista: disk drive: usersusernameAppDataLocalMicrosoftOutlook

Windows XP and Windows 2000: disk drive: Documents and SettingsusernameLocal SettingsApplication DataMicrosoftOutlook

After you run the inbox repair tool, start the MS Outlook. Select the profile in Outlook that contains PST file you tried to repair. On the view or go menu, click the folder list to turn on the folder list view. Check if all the folders are present. Generally, these folders are empty. Along with these, there is a new folder named lost and found, which has files recovered from the corrupt PST. Drag these files to a newly created PST file and remove all other folders. If there is, something missing and you wish to recover more items try running the repair tool again.

If the PST file is corrupt due to size issue, you can try 2GB Truncation utility easily downloadable from Microsoft download center. After downloading, extract the file to an empty folder and choose Pst2GB.exe out of the five extracted files. Select the oversized PST file and open it. Create a new file to save truncated data. Type the amount of data you wish to truncate and run scanpst.exe on the newly created file. Open MS Outlook and try to open the truncated file, if it does not open delete it and create a new one again.

Although these two methods help many people in performing recovery, but they require more time and specific technical skill set. Using a third party software like Kernel for PST recovery is the best way out. Easy to use, interactive and user-friendly software, it effectively repairs entire corrupt PST file within minutes. Easy to download and install, Kernel for PST repair software comes with a plethora of useful features and functionalities. System administrators as well as home users who work on MS Outlook client very often can use it. It can be used by non-technical or novice users also and it supports MS Outlook 97, 2000, XP, 2003, 2007 and 2010.

Article summary

There are several instances when PST files get corrupt. Inbox repair tools help in recovering but not many are successful to perform complete PST repair. Hence, usage of Kernel for PST Recovery, third party software is preferred. Easy to use and download, this software effectively repairs corrupt PST file within few clicks.

About the Author

Steve Smith is a system administrator with many years of experience in working on different email client server systems. This article mainly deals with PST corruption issues and ways to perform recovery.

2 thoughts on “Ways to repair corrupt PST file in MS Outlook

  1. Hello, Steve smith Its a wonderful article share to how can repair .pst file in MS outlook. It is amazing way to repair and recover deleted and corrupted emails from MS outlook. Then i have used Kernel for PST repair tool and solve our pst file corruption issue, those who have trouble you can use this software.

  2. Outlook comes with different version and all are differentiated with theire PST file size e.g. Outlook 2000 stores 2 GB data,Outlook 2007 and 2003 stores 20 GB data in PST file, Outlook 2010 stores 50 GB data in it. In such kind of situation if you try to store more data than its maximum file size limit then your PST file get corrupt and you become unable to access your stored data in it. But don’t worry repairing size limit errors in ms outlook is possible by using the Outlook repair tool.The software helps you to repair your corrupted PST file and also helps to save it. You can download the free demo version of the software and you can preview your recovery results.

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