Reasons of Outlook Corruption and Software for Outlook Recovery

Is your Outlook PST (Personal Storage Table) file corrupted and inaccessible? Are you getting strange error messages while accessing PST file? PST is the repository of all your mission-critical emails, notes, contacts, tasks, and other Outlook objects. When it gets corrupted or becomes inaccessible, serious data loss problems occur. In such situations, you need to repair and restore the damaged PST file using efficient MS Outlook recovery software, if a valid backup is not available.

Reasons of MS Outlook PST Corruption:

There are various application and system factors, which may damage the PST file and make it unusable. Some of the most frequent and common causes of MS Outlook PST corruption are as given below:

·     Virus Infection- Viruses are malicious programs, which infect and corrupt your PST file and make it inaccessible. Viruses may enter your system by several means, including Internet, virus infected attachment, and connecting virus infected removable media. You should always  use an updated and advanced anti-virus application to regularly scan your PST file.

·     Oversized PST File- In Microsoft Outlook 2002 and earlier versions, you cannot have a PST file more than 2 GB in size. If it exceeds the 2 GB size limit, it gets damaged and you can not access data from it.

·     Improper Termination of Outlook Application- You should close the Outlook application gracefully after saving all the changes you made to PST file and clicking ‘Exit’ menu item. But, if Outlook shuts down improperly while your PST file is in use, there are strong chances of PST file corruption. Improper termination can be due to operating system crash, power outages, and using ‘End Task’ option from Windows Task Manager.

·     MS Outlook Application Deficiencies- Every application has deficiencies, therefore does MS Outlook. Some of these deficiencies come from short sights of developers. Generally they are expected to be fixed, but can not be fixed simply using patches or fixes.

In order to fix PST file corruption and perform Microsoft Outlook recovery, Outlook has an inbuilt tool, called Inbox Repair Tool. However, this tool has a limitation that it cannot fix PST file corruption, caused by external reasons, like virus infection and improper termination of Outlook application. In such cases, need of Outlook recovery software arises.

The applications are incorporated with powerful and advanced scanning methods to throughly scan entire PST file and extract all inaccessible data from it. The Outlook recovery utilities are totally safe and easy to use.

Stellar Phoenix Outlook PST Repair is the best PST repair software ever made, which works in all PST corruption scenarios. The software is designed particularly for Microsoft Outlook 2007, 2003, 2002, and 2000. It is capable of restoring all PST file objects, including emails, notes, contacts, tasks, journal, and calendar entries.

PST corruption – Causes and Tips to Recover from corruption

MS Outlook is an email application that enables you to communicate with your contacts by means of emails. Apart from being a routine email application, it can also be used for various other purposes as creating calendar entries, managing address book, setting up meetings and reminders, etc. All such information is stored in a proprietary file format called a Personal Storage (PST) file. However, at times this PST file can get corrupted due to various reasons. In such scenarios, you should take appropriate measures to rectify the situation. However, if you are not able to repair the PST file then you should use a third-party Outlook recovery software to do it for you.

Reasons of corruption:

There could be various reasons for PST corruption that could either be hardware as well as software reasons. Such reasons are collated for you in the following points:

· Hardware reasons:

◦ Power failure: A power failure may lead to PST corruption as Outlook is exited abruptly.

◦ Data storage device failure: It may be possible that the location where the PST file is stored has bad sectors, which leads to PST corruption.

◦ Faulty networking device: If the PST is on a server computer and you are accessing it from a client computer, then faulty hardware components may cause the PST to get corrupted.

· Software reasons:

◦ Deficiencies in Outlook programs: Some bugs in Outlook may result in PST corruption. For example, the Outlook versions before Outlook 2003 used to get corrupt as soon as their size crossed 2 GB.

◦ Incorrect file system recovery: Sometimes when you recover the file system, it is not recovered properly, which may lead to PST corruption.

◦ Virus or other malicious software: Certain viruses are designed to corrupt the PST files.

◦ Terminate Outlook abruptly: If Outlook is exited abnormally, then there are chances that the PST file may get corrupt.

Resolution:

To resolve the PST file corruption, you should use the in-built Inbox Repair (Scanpst.exe) tool. This tool is able to verify and correct errors in the internal data structures of PST file. However, if you still are not able to repair the corrupted PST file then you should use a third-party Microsoft Outlook recovery software to do the needful for you. Such read-only tools are able to recover Outlook objects without overwriting the original contents.

Stellar Phoenix Outlook PST Repair( http://www.microsoftoutlook-recovery.com ) is an Outlook recovery software that successfully restores corrupted PST files. It supports MS Outlook 2010 (Beta), 2007, 2003, 2002, and 2000. This MS Outlook recovery software is able to recover Outlook objects, such as emails, contacts, calendar entries, journals, tasks, meetings notes, etc. In addition, this tool is able to preserve the formatting of the RTF and HTML messages. It is compatible with Windows 7, Vista, Server 2003, XP, and Server 2000.