FIX: Broken/Damaged/Corrupted Outlook (2007/2010/2013/2016) PST Folders

Outlook PST (Personal Storage Table) is the file format used by Microsoft Outlook for storing mailbox data like Inbox Items, Sent Items, Deleted Items, Calendar entries, Contacts, Notes, Journal, and much more.  And each Outlook profile has at least one PST file related with it and this single file is very vital for any Outlook account holder. MS outlook is having many useful and wonderful functions. But it is also found that due to various unpleasant reasons this gets corrupted, damaged or broken.

This is the very irritating problem and usually, the corruption to Outlook PST leaves the PST files in broken state and user won’t be able to access your emails and other Outlook elements anymore and this leads to the permanent and temporary data loss. But luckily, this situation can be fixed as Microsoft Outlook application provides an Inbox Repair tool “Scanpst.exe”. This inbuilt tool helps to fix the corruption and broken/damaged PST file. But before moving further it is also important to understand the reasons that are responsible for the corruption of the PST file.

Reasons behind MS Outlook PST Corruption:

If you are facing problem while opening Outlook or it starts hanging, freezing randomly or abruptly crashes and fails to launch, then this means that your Outlook PST file gets damaged or broken. There are various unexpected reasons that are responsible behind this, here check out some of them:

• PST files are increasing beyond its size limit
• Due to sudden termination of Outlook while accessing the mailbox data
• Due to virus/malware infection to PST file
• Hard drive bad sectors can damage the PST.
• Faulty PST splitting / resizing operation
• Errors during transferring PST from one system on a network to another

Since when the Outlook PST file is severely damaged, this start displaying an error message informing that the PST file is damaged or broken. It is recommended that you should stop using the Outlook so that no new data is being written to the PST file. To recover the damaged/broken Outlook PST files follow the manual methods as well as automatic method given below.

Manual Method to Fix Corrupt PST:

You can make use of the inbuilt Inbox Repair Utility ScanPST.exe manually to fix the corrupted PST file. This is inbuilt repair tool is not so advanced so it helps to fix minor issues within the damaged PSTs. Follow the steps given below to use it:

• Go to the Outlook installation folder on the PC (different for each Outlook version)
• And launch the ScanPST.exe tool then click on the Browse button, this will find the damaged PST. If in case you are unaware of the PST file’s location but only know that you are having a single PST that is automatically created by Outlook, then open an explorer window and type the given command:

%appdata%MicrosoftOutlook

          Now you can see your PST file in the list, which is called Outlook.pst.

• As the PST file opens within ScanPST.exe, click on ‘Start’ button to begins scanning process. This process might take some time to complete; this totally depends upon PST file size.
• Once the scanning process is completed, a report will be displayed with errors that are found.
• Click on the ‘Repair’ button to fix the errors and then click ‘OK’ button as the repair process is completed.

This process will help you to fix the minor corruption in the PST file manually but it is also found that ScanPST.exe utility is unable to fix major issues in the PST and also takes longer time in completing the repair process. The repair process is also quite difficult for the non-technical users. So, in this case, you can make use of the automatic Outlook PST File Repair Tool.

This is powerful Outlook PST Software that can easily fix broken PST file without making any changes. This tool is recommended by the professional as this is capable of fixing any types of corruption, damaged or broken PST files and bringing PSTs to a normal state. It can easily repair different Microsoft Outlook versions such as 2016, 2010, 2007, 2003 and 2000 on Windows OS. With the help of this tool, you can repair and recover the corrupt or inaccessible emails, calendar entries, contacts, appointments and much more.  It is easy to use even a novice user can use it.

Steps to Use Outlook PST File Repair Tool:

Step 1: Download and launch Outlook PST File Repair tool. Then ‘select outlook file’ to choose PST file where you want to work or you may find the specific PST file also.

Step 2: Press “start” to commence scanning after selecting PST file.

Step 3: After scanning, mailbox folders and other data will emerge on left side of the window. Select files of your selection.

Step 4: Then “save recovered file” on your system.

Step 5: After saving your files, a dialogue box will materialize that confirms files are accumulated and also displays “destination path” and “restored file size”.