Data Rescue Tip - Use MS Utilities to Repair Outlook Files
Posted by: Barry Cleave in Freeware, Hints & Tips, tags: Email, Outlook, Programs, Software, Utilities, Windows, Windows XPWhat Is It?
If your Outlook email files become corrupted you may not be able to start Outlook, the program may load slowly or unexpected behaviour or error messages may appear when carrying out operations like moving or deleting emails. What you may not know is that Microsoft provide tools to repair your .pst files (and .ost files for “corporate” Exchange Server setups.
Why Would You Want It?
Quite simply (and obviously 
) to repair your email file if they have become corrupted. So if you think your Outlook email has become very slow to startup or is behaving strangely it may be worthwhile trying this solution.
Quite interestingly my Outlook 2003 has been very slow starting up for some time. I thought it was all part of the general slowing down of my XP system which needs to be reinstalled as I reported a short while ago (My Current XP OS is Dying (and Holiday Weekend in the UK)). However yesterday I went to empty the “Deleted Items” folder and got an error message saying
“The messaging interface has returned an unknown error. If the problem persists, start Outlook again.”
I duly restarted Outlook but the same error message appeared when I tried to empty the “Deleted Items” folder again. Now, as you may know Outlook has problems if the .pst file becomes too large, there are also problems with deleting large numbers of files, so I first tried reducing the size of the main folder by archiving emails older than 1 Jan 2008. The archive routine duly produced the folder structure in the new archive.pst I created but wouldn’t move the emails. I could manually move the emails by dragging and dropping but couldn’t empty the deleted items folder. At this point Outlook locked up and I had to terminate it in the Task Manager. On restarting it went through the
“The data file ‘Personal Folders’ was not closed properly. The file is being checked for problems.” checking procedure. However this did not fix the problem (another Microsoft annoyance - why doesn’t it check the file properly 
), so at this point I decided to use the pst file repair utility .
What Does It Do - The Essentials?
Summary:
- Repairs the Outlook email data storage files
Pros: What’s Good?
Features & Benefits
- MS Utility provided with Outlook
- Simple to use
- Option to backup original file
- Good Information in the Outlook Help file
- Further Information in the Microsoft knowledge base articles
Cons:What’s Not So Good?
- Why can’t you run it from within Outlook under Tools or Help*
* The “Detect and Repair….” option under “Help” in Outlook does not check and repair the pst data files but users may be mislead into thinking they have exhausted their options having used this.
More About What it Does in Detail:
Microsoft Support article - How to use the Inbox Repair Tools to recover e-mail messages in Outlook 2002, Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007 gives extensive details on how to use the repair tool, what it does and how it may delete corrupted data. I would recommend reading this before you use the tool.
There are also details in the Outlook Help file available from the Outlook “Help” Menu. Just enter “repair” in the search box and select “About the Inbox Repair Tool”
(Click on pictures to enlarge)
Having located the repair tool executable and starting the program you see the following screen:
Browse to the pst file you want to repair (see the Outlook Help file of MS Support web page for details of where this is likely to be or simply search your hard disk(s) for *.pst
Clicking on the start button you see the progress bar and information on each of the 8 scan phases.
When the scanning stage is complete you are presented with the following screen.
Here you have the opportunity to backup the original file which I would recommend you do.
When the repair is complete you see the following dialog:
and that’s it
What is the ProReviewer Experience?
I have used the “Inbox Repair Tool” both for my home and work email pst files and it has fixed the problems every time. I am not aware of having lost data but as the files all contained many hundreds of emails, appointments, etc. I cannot be sure. Making sure you regularly backup pst files should help prevent any data loss as you can always open the backup pst file in Outlook. (You can probably also search/index the file using desktop search software providing it is loaded/mounted in Outlook)
Personally I rate this as:
A Very Useful Rescue/Repair Tool
What Other Posts are Relevant
Tip - Help Avoid Duplicate Emails in MS Outlook - Change Timeout Settings
Recuva - Easy and Quick Way to Recover Deleted Photos and Files
10 Ways to Save & Protect Your Data - Even files You Just Saved or Text You Just Typed
Backup - Identify Where the Data Is - Find the Location of Your Information on a Windows Based PC?
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Entries (RSS)
June 23rd, 2008 at 3:38 am - Edit
I have used it many times successfully. Still, BACKUP you pst first
acakaduts last blog post..80:20 QuickTools 1.0
June 25th, 2008 at 8:12 pm - Edit
[...] Data Rescue Tip - Use MS Utilities to Repair Outlook Files [...]
July 6th, 2008 at 8:36 pm - Edit
[...] caused a lot of duplicates to accumulate. Recently I had problems with Outlook crashing ( see Data Rescue Tip - Use MS Utilities to Repair Outlook Files ) and this weekend I had some more problems with timeouts due to my Internet connection [...]
August 6th, 2008 at 5:53 am - Edit
[...] Data Rescue Tip - Use MS Utilities to Repair Outlook Files [...]
August 6th, 2008 at 6:55 am - Edit
[...] Data Rescue Tip - Use MS Utilities to Repair Outlook Files [...]
October 28th, 2008 at 7:24 pm - Edit
There is another variant for solve these problem,i think next tool will fight with MS products,because possible it freeware and have not few good possibilities-moving messages from ost to pst,program allows to convert data from *.ost to *.pst files, that can be read by Microsoft Outlook or any other compatible mail client,allows to process any encrypted *.ost file and extract all data from it. It is the only way to recover information,transform *.ost files to *.pst files, that can be easily opened by Microsoft Outlook email client, or any other compatible program,moving mail from pst to ost in Outlook to recover all of your contacts and critical information and avoid data losses,yet moving Outlook ost file to pst is the only way to recover your data.
January 5th, 2009 at 1:58 pm - Edit
There is another variant for solve these problem,i think next tool will fight with MS products,because possible it freeware and have not few good possibilities-moving messages from ost to pst,program allows to convert data from *.ost to *.pst files, that can be read by Microsoft Outlook or any other compatible mail client,allows to process any encrypted *.ost file and extract all data from it. It is the only way to recover information,transform *.ost files to *.pst files, that can be easily opened by Microsoft Outlook email client, or any other compatible program,moving mail from pst to ost in Outlook to recover all of your contacts and critical information and avoid data losses,yet moving Outlook ost file to pst is the only way to recover your data.
February 10th, 2009 at 12:07 pm - Edit
In this situation advise use-microsoft pst viewer,as far as i know soft is free,tool will help you to restore your data from files with *.pst and *.ost extension,tool will work under all supported versions of Microsoft Windows operating system, as well as with Microsoft Outlook,can retrieve all contents as a number of files in *.vcf, *.txt and *.eml formats,will extract thousands of different files, that will be placed into any folder, upon your choice,converting of recovered data into a *.pst file, that can be opened by any mail client or viewer .pst file, compatible with Microsoft Outlook, file size will not exceed 1Gb.
February 21st, 2009 at 11:58 pm - Edit
The microsoft utilities usually do the trick for me and the times that is hasn’t I have had some success importing the .pst files into another email client and then exporting back out to Outlook from there
Computer Repairs last blog post..Data Recovery and File Undelete Service
April 6th, 2009 at 8:51 am - Edit
initially when i bought computer it was looking difficult for me to handle few things but slowly i kept learning about computer from my friends and with the grace of god today i can repair few things of my own.
April 6th, 2009 at 6:53 pm - Edit
It is the only way to recover information,transform *.ost files to *.pst files, that can be easily opened by Microsoft Outlook email client, or any other compatible program,moving mail from pst to ost in Outlook to recover all of your contacts and critical information and avoid data losses,yet moving Outlook ost file to pst is the only way to recover your data.
April 8th, 2009 at 2:39 am - Edit
if i don’t know things in the computer i always refer expert who come to home and not only do repair but also teach me so that i also get the computer repair knowledge.
April 15th, 2009 at 10:51 am - Edit
Thanks for this blog and [...] Data Rescue Tip - Use MS Utilities to Repair Outlook Files [...]