By Sophia | Last Updated
In our modern office work, Outlook can really be a great helper in managing emails. It can help you make a schedule in a calendar, store a list of contacts, journals, and even the old emails. And Outlook data file is critically important in Outlook for it stores the items mentioned above. As Outlook data file is so important for Outlook, it is essential to know how to repair the Outlook data file. Typically, there are two types of Outlook data file: PST file and OST file. We would show you detailed steps to repair the two types of Outlook data file respectively.
When you find that your Outlook PST file can't open, you can follow some steps to repair the file.
Step 1: Close the Outlook client and then start the Inbox Repair Tool.
You can choose manually to start the Microsoft Outlook inbox repair tool by double-clicking the SCANPST.EXE.
Here are the possible paths of SCANPST.EXE for different versions of Outlook.
MS also offers a way to start Inbox repair tool automatically. You should just choose the link option according to your Outlook version and click Run or Open it in the file download box, then follow its instructions to repair your PST file. Check details in this official page.
Step 2: Scan and Repair the target Outlook PST file.
Once you find the SCANPST.EXE, just double-click it. In the coming Microsoft Outlook Inbox Repair Tool dialog, just click Browse to find the target Outlook PST file then click Start button.
Tips: If you don't know how to find the Outlook PST file, just refer to how to find Outlook data file location.
In the coming dialog, just read the scanning result report, then click Repair button to repair the target Outlook PST file.
Step 3: Drag the repaired items to a new PST file.
When the repairing is completed, just restart the Outlook with the profile associated with the Outlook data file(*.pst) that just repaired. In the folder pane, press Ctrl+6 key at same time, you may find a folder named Lost and Found which contains some items repaired by the inbox repair tool. Then you can just create a new PST file and drag the items from Lost and Found folder to the new PST file.
Attention: You should be aware of that some items would not be repaired by the inbox repair tool, but you can extract that from the backup PST file which has a .bak extension. Just turn the .bak extension to the .bak.pst extension and open it with the Outlook, then drag some additional items from it. Now you can repair your PST file.
Some types of account, such as Microsoft Exchange account would like to use the OST file to store items which means the OST file usually acts as the copy of your data stored in your email server. If you have some problems with the Outlook OST file, you can directly delete the existing OST file and the new OST file would be recreated automatically by synchronizing data with your email server.
Step 1: Close your Outlook.
Step 2: Navigate to Start>>Control Panel>>Mail.
Step 3: Click Show Profile in the Mail-Setup dialog. Then select a profile and click Properties. In the coming dialog, just click Email Accounts.
Step 4: Select the target OST file under Data File tab, then click Open File Location to identify the exact location of the OST file.
Step 5: In the coming window, right-click the name of the OST file, click Delete in the coming option list.
Step 6: Now open your Outlook again, the new OST file would be created automatically.
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