Repair corrupt Outlook PST files with Inbox Repair Tool or Fix It

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At times you may find that your Outlook .pst file have been corrupted and that you are unable to access them. Microsoft has provided the Inbox Repair Tool which lets you recover folders and items from corrupted Personal Folders or .pst files. It can even recover items from offline folder or .ost files.

inbox repair tool 400x354 Repair corrupt Outlook PST files with Inbox Repair Tool or Fix It

The Inbox Repair Tool or Scanpst.exe is located in the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14 folder. To run the tool type scanpst.exe in Start Search and hit Enter. In the space provided, enter the name and location of the file you want to scan and click Start.

The tool can recover the following personal folders:

  • Calendar
  • Contacts
  • Deleted Items
  • Inbox
  • Journal
  • Notes
  • Outbox
  • Sent Items
  • Tasks

While the Inbox Repair Tools is quite easy to use, if you are too lazy to even do this, you can download and run Microsoft Fix It 50569 from KB272227. This Fix It will do the needful automatically.

Fixit Repair corrupt Outlook PST files with Inbox Repair Tool or Fix It

A PST file has a 2-GB size limit. Once this limit is reached, corruption will start occurring. In such a case if the Inbox Repair Tool cannot fix the corruption, you can try to use the Oversized PST And OST Crop Utility or the PST2GB Tool from Microsoft first, and then again repeat the Inbox Repair Tool. This tool deletes 25 MB of data from the file to bring the file back within the allowed. While this tool was used in the earlier versions of Outlook, I am not sure about its use or applicability in the current Outlook version. So please read all the instructions and exercise utmost caution should you think you can and should run this tool. If you need more help on this, you may contact Microsoft Support.

OLFix may also interest you as it allows you repair more Outlook problems.

Hope this helps!

Posted by on , in Category Office with Tags ,
Anand aka HappyAndyK is an end-user Windows enthusiast, a Microsoft MVP in Windows Desktop Experience since 2007, and the Admin of TheWindowsClub.com, TheGeeksClub.com & WinVistaClub.com. Creating a System Restore Point before trying out a new software or a tweak is always recommended.

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  • http://www.robbenwell.com Rob Benwell

    Thanks for the article about this scanpst.exe .. i found new information from your post..Microsoft can Fix It 50569 from KB272227.. thanks

  • PST Repair

    Thank you!!! Fantastic instructions. “Errors have been detected in the file outlook.PST”. Try something else… outlook PST repair tool which is more helpful to solutions.

  • Janeparker84

    Really, now I got more information about scanpst to repair pst file…another fix could be outlook pst repair ..

  • PST Repair Tool

    Thank you!!! Fantastic instructions. “Errors have been detected in the file outlook.PST”. Try something else… outlook PST repair tool which is more helpful to solutions.

  • Christina

    There is no doubt that built-in scanpst tool is capable to handle most of the issues of MS Outlook. However, this application fails in case of heavily corruption or damaged. 2 weeks ago, I was experiencing corruption issue and I tried the scanpst tool but no success. After googlng and investing some times on the Web, I found an Outlook PST repair tool as mentioned here:http://www.recover-computerdata.com/outlook-pst-repair.html

    After using this application, I found that tool is really capable to handle all corruption problems in MS Outlook.

  • John Park

    Sometimes you need to run the Scanpst.exe 3 to 4 times to repair the pst file. But firstly , you need to identify the version of Microsoft Outlook that you are using. The size limitation for .pst file is 2 GB in Microsoft Outlook 2002 and its earlier versions .

    Also Scanpst.exe is not able to repair the .pst file which have the size of more than 2 GB. So it is necessary to know the version of the Outlook and reason for .pst file corruption. Once you get the information then either Scanpst.exe or not. So more use in such cases

    Thanks
    http://pstrepairtool.blogspot.com