Repairing Corrupt PST File in Outlook 2003

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

MS Outlook is an email application from Microsoft that is extensively used for emailing, managing contacts and meetings, etc. It is a very useful tool that enables us to remain in touch with our contacts and manage our to-do lists in a better and efficient way. All the Outlook-related information is stored in a PST(personal storage) file, which may sometimes get corrupt. The corruption can happen because of various reasons, such as virus infections, header corruption, power surges, abrupt system shutdown, etc. In such cases, you should use certain corrective methods to rectify the issue. However, if you are not able to do so then you should use a third-party PST recovery tool to recover PST file.

Consider a scenario wherein you try to open Outlook 2003 in your Windows XP system but fail to do so. An error message is displayed, that is:

"Unable to display the folder,[path]Outlook.pst could not be accessed, access denied."

Cause:

The root cause of this error message is that the PST(personal storage) file contains errors and has corrupted because of this. When the PST(personal storage) file corrupts, Outlook is unable to read information in the hierarchy from the file and, thus, the error message is displayed.

Resolution:

To resolve this error and repair the PST, you can perform the following methods:

1. Use Inbox Repair (Scanpst.exe) tool: Exit Outlook and repair the PST file by double-clicking the Scanpst.exe file. It will attempt to scan and fix the errors in the outlook PST.

2. Perform following steps if you are not able to open the PST file:

a) Run Scandisk.exe file to fix the hard disk related errors.
b) Try to move the.PST file to another computer and check whether it is a system-specific issue or not.
c) Create a new Outlook profile.
d) Map the moved PST(personal storage) file to the new Outlook profile.
e) Now try to open Outlook. This would resolve the issue.

However, if you still are not able to resolve the issue then you should use a third-party PST file recovery tool to recover the corrupt PST file. Such read-only tools are able to recover all the components of the PST file without overwriting the original data.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/4370046

1 Comment:

Alex said...

pst repair is right choice for resolution associated with corrupted and deleted outlook data. Program uses modern methods of recovering .pst and .ost files. Software owns clear, intuitive interface for any experienced users. It works with invalid files from any version of MS Outlook.