Repairing corrupted PST file in Outlook 2002
Posted by admin on July 26th, 2010Microsoft Outlook is a popular email client used by numerous users across the world. Besides being an email program, it is also used for managing contacts and tasks, creating calendar entries, and browsing the Internet. All the information such as email items, calendar entries, contacts, etc is stored in a .pst file. However, sometimes the PST file can get corrupt and you are not able to view your emails and other items. In this case, you should take appropriate corrective measures to recover PST file. However, if you are unable to do so, then you should use a third-party PST recovery software for the same.
Consider a scenario wherein you are using MS Outlook 2002. You try to open Outlook but are unable to do so.
Cause:
The reason for this scenario is that the PST file may have got corrupt and, thus, inaccessible because of various reasons such as:
· PST file getting over 2 GB.
· You have performed an upgrade of versions.
· There is a header corruption in the PST file.
· Other miscellaneous reasons such as virus infections, human errors, power surges, etc.
Resolution:
To resolve this issue and access the corrupted PST file, there are two in-built methods provided by Microsoft. But before doing anything, make sure that you create a copy of the PST file. These methods are:
· The Inbox Repair tool: It repairs the header of the PST file and deletes anything that it fails to understand. It works well if the corruption is because of a version upgrade. However, if the corruption is because of any other reason then it demolishes whatever is left in the file. So, you should use this tool if and only if the PST has corrupted because of upgrade issue.
· The Oversized OST and PST crop tool: Sometimes the PST files of Outlook 2002 and earlier versions get corrupted once they cross the 2 GB limit. This tool removes about 25 MB of data to bring down the PST file to its storage limit. However, this tool should only be used as a last resort since it may remove some valuable data.
As it turns out, the aforementioned methods may not be able to perform PST recovery in a safe and secure manner. In such cases, you should use a third-party PST recovery tool to repair the PST file. Such read-only tools are able to repair the PST file using fast yet sophisticated scanning algorithms thereby ensuring that data is not lost in the process.