Microsoft Outlook is the de-facto normal for office communication. A typical office employee’s entire workflow consists of tasks, contacts, and email exchange in Microsoft Outlook. But what happens if one day a program crash happens, or a challenging drive fails, or some malware targets and corrupts your Outlook information? Does this mean the end of the day for your whole office?
Are you betting on the chance that corruption is unlikely to happen? Take into account the following. In a typical office environment, Outlook PST and OST files that contain all e-mail, tasks, appointments and contacts are the files accessed most often. Computers read and write to these files all the time during the working day, except for the lunch break. If there is 1 file that is likely to be damaged or corrupted during a power outage, that would be an Outlook storage container. If Windows crashes at the moment Outlook was accessing a PST or OST file, the corruption will happen just about inevitably. If that happens, Microsoft Outlook will not be able to access that data, and it will report a corrupt database.
Modern hard drives are produced to barely survive through the warranty period. Chances of tough drive failure boost exponentially right after about 3 years of use. Do not let a hard drive failure to get you unprepared!
Power outages, black-outs and brown-outs are becoming all too common. A UPS can save you from power outages, firewalls can defend against viruses and malware, and typical backups will get you back on track if the unpredictable happens. But what if the backup is a couple of days old, and you’re in the middle of some thing critical? What if you can not afford to lose a variety of days of work? Contemplate repairing the corrupt Outlook database to save you days of function!
Outlook has a built-in recovery mechanism. If Outlook detects corruption in a PST or OST file, it rejects the file automatically, not allowing you to continue your function.
Microsoft delivers another level of recovery in the form of a special Inbox Repair Tool to recover corrupt databases called ScanPST.exe. It claims to recover corrupt Offline Folders (*.ost) and Individual Folders (.pst). Sadly, this level of information recovery can only cope with small problems, and often fails if a lot more significant damage is done to the database. Even worse, quite often its recovery attempt produces files even extra damaged than the originals. Microsoft warns that making use of that tool can result in information loss.
If every thing else fails, refer to a third-party answer such as Recovery ToolBox for Outlook
Recovery ToolBox for Outlook permits you to access PST and OST files directly, bypassing Microsoft Outlook entirely. It implements its own algorithm of accessing Microsoft proprietary formats and optionally converting information into a set of standard .eml files. The toolbox is not limited to just data recovery, allowing you to convert your *.pst and *.ost files into a set of *.eml and *.vcf files, or convert *.pst files into *.ost format.
Recovery ToolBox for Outlook maximizes your chances of effective information recovery of your mailbox files with all email folders, tasks, appointments, contacts and any other data stored in the PST files.