Friday, May 18, 2012

How to repair severely damaged Outlook PST file instantly

Among many email applications probably Microsoft Outlook is the most used one. Mainly, in organizations, which have implemented MS Exchange Server in their work place, Outlook is used as a client side email application. When configured, Outlook stores the mail items of your entire mailbox in a PST file. This PST file is responsible for storage and access of mail items from your mailbox. By any means, if this PST file gets damaged or corrupt, all your emails, contacts, calendar entries, tasks, notes, and journals become completely inaccessible. It is not always possible to avoid the corruption of the PST files, but, certainly there are many PST repair utilities available, using which you can easily recover your mail items back.



In case of corruption to your Outlook PST file, initially you may encounter problems performing the day to day normal operations, like opening, copying, and moving of mail items. Soon, the corruption becomes harsh and ultimately the entire mailbox becomes inaccessible. In such cases, Outlook also flashes various error messages, one of which can be written as below:

Microsoft Outlook has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.
If you were in the middle of something, the information you were working on might be lost.
Please tell Microsoft about this problem.
We have created an error report that you can send to help us improve Microsoft Outlook. We will treat this report as confidential and anonymous.
To see what data this error report contains, click here.

The error message indicates that there is a possible corruption in your Outlook PST file. The PST file gets corrupt due to various reasons, such as unexpected or improper shutting down of Outlook, improper/interrupted compaction of PST, virus/malware infection, contradiction with newly installed hardware/software, file system corruption, operating system malfunction etc.

For such situations, Microsoft has suggested one powerful utility, 'Inbox Repair Tool' or 'scanpst.exe'. This utility helps in verifying and repairing the corrupt PST file. However, in case of severe corruption in the PST file, this Inbox Repair Tool even fails to repair the PST file and your mailbox remains inaccessible.

Under such circumstances, you can take the help of a third-party PST repair utility, such as Stellar Phoenix Outlook PST Repair. The software is powerful enough to repair even the severely damaged PST file. The software incorporates powerful algorithms, which can successfully recover mail objects from any password protected or encrypted PST files. Moreover, the utility is completely read-only in its recovery process and with distinguished options, quite easy to use.

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