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.