Use Outlook Inbox Repair Tool to repair badly corrupted PST file

Whenever you have encountered a situation like PST File corruption or inaccessibility of Outlook then the most common solution which is recommended by experts is to use Microsoft Outlook Inbox Repair Tool, also named as Scanpst.exe. This repair utility is an inbuilt utility and get installed automatically when you install Outlook the very first time in your system. Inbox repair tool works on the principle of firstly scanning the PST file for errors and then repairing the file if any errors are found.

Use of Inbox Repair Tool :

Resolve PST file errors to get access to Outlook

While working on your Microsoft Outlook, one day suddenly you get the message “No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it.”. You try endlessly to send and receive operations but nothing helps. For accurate performance of Outlook, it requires to identify the root cause of this error message. Generally, this problem is related with Internet connectivity and account setting issues. Whenever, the settings are configured incorrectly then this problem may arises.

However, there may be some other reasons for the above error message which includes:

• Incorrect settings of Anti-virus software
• Outlook installation is damaged
• Outlook profile is corrupted

Repair corrupt .pst file when Scanpst.exe utility fails

Generally it is recommended to use the Scanpst.exe utility when Outlook .pst file get corrupted. But Scanpst utility has some specific limitations, like it is not able to repair the files which have the size larger than 2 GB. Also there are possibilities that once the scanpst.exe is used to scan and repair the corrupt pst file then it may further make changes in file because of its repair process. Hence, scanpst.exe does not completely ensure you the recovery of pst file and might also shows some error while repairing the file.

To exemplify the above issue, consider a practical case. Suppose, your Outlook.pst file got corrupted due to unexpected shutdown and when you run Scanpst.exe tool to repair the corrupt Outlook PST file, you received an error message as below:

“An error has occurred which caused the scan to be stopped. No changes have been made to the scanned file.”

This error message indicates that Scanpst.exe utility is not able to scan and repair the corrupt pst file.

One of the reason could be that Scanpst is not properly installed. In that case reinstall the Microsoft Outlook properly. Scanpst.exe also fails to work when the size of .pst file get increased more than 2 GB and start showing the above mentioned error.

One solution to deal with this situation is to use the backup of .pst file. During the scanpst.exe repair process, it creates a backup of original .pst file with name .bak. This .bak file is created in the same folder in which original .pst file is located. This .bak file recover items that scanpst.exe failed to recover. Make a copy of .bak file and rename it with .pst extension. Import the bak.pst file and move other items in it that you have created.

However, if you are still unable to repair damaged .pst file during scanpst.exe repair process then it is better to repair Outlook PST file with the help of a PST repair tool which helps you to recover all Outlook objects.

How do Outlook Repair tool helps you in PST Repair?

Even repair of Outlook PST file by Inbox repair tool leaves corrupt Outlook PST file in a same state. Data of Outlook e-mail objects, such as e-mail messages, contacts, attachments, appointments, journal, tasks, events, remains inaccessible. Inbox repair tool is provided by Microsoft to repair corrupt PST file. But due to its limited functionality, Outlook PST file can not be made corruption free. Well, inaccessible data can be restored back from a pst backup file. If backup is unavailable, then the only and last option left for you is to use a third party Outlook PST Repair products.