To stay updated with the latest technology, usually people upgrade to higher version of Windows OS. Being updated with latest version is nice but what if during Windows upgrading, PST file that contain all your email data get damaged or corrupt?

Many people seek help after Windows upgrade, as they lose their important email data stored in the PST file. Upgrading is not anyhow responsible for loss of email data, as successful upgrading always provide you with added benefits. Incomplete upgrading process can be the reason of PST corruption, as due to incomplete upgrade, operating system gets corrupt or damaged.

Just have a look at the symptoms that help you to determine that your PST file has got corrupt.

After Windows upgrade if you encounter any of the following error messages on opening Outlook, then it is for sure that your PST file is corrupt and you will need to perform Outlook PST repair:

• “abc.pst cannot be opened,”

• “Outlook cannot access the abc.pst file,”

• “The abc file that you are trying to access is not an Outlook file”.

Well, let’s not discuss the problem anymore and move further to the solution, so that people, who are looking for help may find the right way to perform Outlook PST repair.

The first thing that can be done for dealing with this situation is using the backup copy of PST file for restoring email data. But discussing this solution is of no use because if backup is available, there will be no need for seeking further help.

Now to repair Outlook PST file, use Inbox repair tool, which is an inbuilt utility, which automatically gets installed with all Microsoft Outlook installation options. Since Inbox Repair utility is suitable to perform Outlook PST repair in cases of mild corruption situations, you may get disappointing results if your PST file is badly damaged or corrupt.

If Inbox Repair tool fails to solve your problem, don’t be upset, as every problem has a solution and PST file corruption is not at all an exception. Once Inbox Repair tool fails to perform successful Outlook PST repair, you can take help of Kernel for Outlook- an effective PST Repair tool.

Using this tool you can repair the corrupt PST file and recover all available email data from it. Once email items are recovered, you can save them to a PST file, which can further be accessed with MS Outlook.

Slow sending of mails and slow receiving of emails make the work situation onerous. There could be various reasons behind this sluggish performance of Outlook. Have a look.

• Before you use Microsoft Word to compose a message, close any Word dialog boxes that you are not using.

• If you use Word as your e-mail editor, you should have at least 128 megabytes (MB) of memory available. To select which e-mail editor you use, in Microsoft Outlook, on the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Mail Format tab. Then, select or clear the Use Microsoft Office Word 2003 to edit e-mail messages check box.

• Programs that work in the background, such as virus-scanning programs, might slow down Word.

• If you use Remote Mail, you can screen messages by reviewing the message headers before you download the complete messages.

• If you use offline folders and typically synchronize all folders, try to synchronize only the folders that you need. Also, because the Deleted Items folder is automatically updated, empty it before you synchronize the folders.

• Notifications can slow down the speed at which you receive messages.

Any kind of corruption in Outlook mailboxes can cause the slow performance issue and can corrupt the Outlook .PST file. Using Kernel for Outlook Repair software you can repair corrupted PST file easily and effectively. It is an output driven tool to retrieve emails from corrupt PST file.

MS Outlook uses and creates PST file for storing all its emails, attachments, calendars, contacts etc. PST file is the database file that might get corrupt for various reasons including saving your file directly on any LAN/WAN link, PST 2 GB file size limitation, virus infection, unexpected power outage, unexpected system shutdown, etc.

If your PST gets corrupt, you will observe that your Outlook client will fail to send/receive email messages or start behaving strangely. However, you can perform Outlook repair using professional Outlook Repair tools which are built specifically to fix the corruption.

For further clarity on this issue, consider a situation when you try to open an Outlook PST file and fail to do so and receive an error message like given below:

“Errors have been detected in the file xxxx.pst. Quit Outlook and all mail-enabled applications, and then use the Inbox repair tool (Scanpst.exe) to diagnose and repair errors in the file. For more information about the Inbox repair tool, see Help.”

After coming across this error message, you find yourself unable to send or receive emails from this PST. Outlook PST file consists of two main parts, one is file header and data. The PST file header further expands over file attributes such as file size, file signature etc. When you try opening the PST file, it first checks the file header and then goes through its data. Any error occurred during this process will result in error given above.

Use Inbox Repair Tool or Scanpst.exe file to repair the corrupt PST file, if the corruption exists in file header. However, scanpst.exe will be unable to resolve the file corruption if file data is inconsistent or in a state that Outlook is unable to read it. But before you use Inbox Repair Tool to repair outlook, first create a backup of your PST file. Backups proves helpful in times of PST file data crisis.

Using a third party Outlook Repair software will also help, as these tools are devised especially to repair these corrupt PST files using powerful scanning algorithm. Also, this software can be easily operated as these are designed with interactive user interface.

Suppose you just started MS Outlook and with your first sip of coffee, you come across an error message displayed by your Microsoft Outlook client that says-

“Outlook.pst is not a personal folders file”

You might just wonder what the hell just happened, if Outlook.pst is not a personal folders file then what it is. Without having a single clue of how to recover your data which becomes inaccessible, you try to figure out what else you can do to fetch your important data.

An Outlook.pst file is basically a repository of everything that you do on MS Outlook i.e. email messages, contact records, calendar events, notes etc. Therefore, anything or everything that you store in Outlook ends up getting stored in a single PST file termed as personal folders file. However, if the file gets damaged due to some reason, Outlook may no longer recognize it and so you won’t be able to access the data.

Your MS Outlook might get corrupt due to a number of reasons. In order to get your PST back in working condition, the first thing you should do is look for a valid backup of the PST file. If the backup copy of PST file is not available try running scanpst.exe, integrated with MS Outlook. However, if scanpst.exe fails to recover your data, use Kernel for Outlook repair and try restoring your data. Software assures you complete and accurate recovery of emails and other email items from PST file.

With Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 a new format of Outlook PST file came into being. A new Personal Folders file .PST format was introduced that supports multilingual Unicode data and also offers greater storage capacity for items and folders. The 2 GB file size limitation factor no longer exists in Outlook 2003 and above versions.

Well one can determine their .PST files format. Just follow the given below steps.

• On the File menu, click Data File Management.

• On the Data Files tab, click the Personal Folders file (.pst) data file that you want to check, and then click Settings.

• View the Format field to see whether it contains the text Personal Folders File or Personal Folders File (97-2002).

Personal Folders File indicates the new format in Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 and Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 that supports multilingual Unicode data and offers greater storage capacity for items and folders. A file in the Personal Folders file format is not compatible with Microsoft Outlook 97-2002.

On the other hand, Personal Folders File (97-2002) indicates that the .PST file format is compatible with the versions of Outlook prior to Outlook 2003. Personal Folders file (97-2002) does not support Unicode and offers the same storage capacity for items and folders that was available in the previous versions of Outlook.

In case your PST file of any format gets corrupt, you can repair PST file using Outlook Repair software. Software is compatible with all versions of MS Outlook.

Emails or other items in a PST file might get deleted either accidentally or intentionally. There are two cases of deletion of emails and other email items in MS Outlook.

One is the item is deleted and is in ‘Deleted Items’ folders. Other case is items or folders have been deleted permanently from ‘Deleted Items’ folder itself.

Now if you want to recover deleted items in Outlook, you’ll have to follow either of the given below steps.

Retrieving an item or folder from the Deleted Items folder

1. On the Go menu, click Folder List, and then in the Navigation Pane, click Deleted Items.

2. Select the items you want to retrieve.

3. Right-click the selection, and then click Move to Folder on the shortcut menu.

4. In the list, click the folder you want to move the items to.

Or, you can simply drag the item from ‘Deleted Items’ folder to another folder.

Recovering items or folders that are permanently deleted

1. On the Go menu, click Folder List, and then in the Navigation Pane, click Deleted Items.

2. On the Tools menu, click Recover Deleted Items.

3. In the list, click the item or folder you want to retrieve, and then click the Recover Selected Items icon.

4. The item is recovered and saved in the Deleted Items folder.

These are little tweaks, which help in recovering deleted items in Outlook. But sometimes they fail in retrieving deleted email items due to complexity involved. Kernel for Outlook is third party Outlook repair solution that ensures complete and successful email items recovery in any case of deletion. It repairs Outlook email file and recovers deleted emails, folders, appointments, tasks, notes, calendars, journals, drafts permanently deleted from the “Deleted Items” folder. Software is supportive to all versions of MS Outlook.

Take a real life situation where you access MS Outlook and all of a sudden you get error message saying,

“Cannot start the reminder service. Unable to show reminders”.

This error suggests that issues are related to MS Outlook Reminders. If this error appears alone, then problem can be sort out easily. But if you encounter this message in conjunction with another error,

“An unknown error has occurred. 0X80040600”

Your problem is not that easy to sort out. Actually with these two errors, MS Outlook loses the ability to send and receive email messages.

Cause

If some kind of corruption prevails or there is damage in Outlook folders, Outlook fails to show the reminders. However, if you delete the reminders, you might be able to solve this issue. But if Outlook cannot perform email operations due to occurrence of second error, possibility is there that your PST file is damaged.

Solution

For cleaning the reminders items to get rid of this issue, follow the given steps:

• Click Start and then Search or Find

• Click ‘Files and Folders’, type ‘Outlook.exe’ in the named box and press ENTER

• Note the full path of ‘Outlook.exe’ and close the box

• Click ‘Start’ and then ‘Run’

• Type the full path of ‘Outlook.exe’ (as noted above), press SPACEBAR, type ‘/’ (the forward slash) and then command-line switch ‘Cleanreminders’ to delete the reminders

With this, Outlook starts working as normal. In case it doesn’t and you are facing problems in email delivery and sending, that means there is serious issue with Outlook PST file. With Kernel for Outlook repair tool this problem too gets solved as there might be the issue of corruption in PST file.

To save space on your hard disk, you need to delete unwanted items from numerous PST folders and then compact these files to make them smaller.

Compacting process will not remove the entire free space from the selected file but it leaves 16 kilobytes or 4% of the file size before compacting (whichever is greater). In order to compact a file, a file must meet the following requirements:

• File must be 16 KB or larger

• File must have at least 16 KB of free space since the last time it was compacted.

Personal folders (PST) files that are not on your computer might require manual compaction. Automatic compaction takes place as an idle task in the background. The following conditions must be true for this background task to take place:

• Outlook must be running.

• Computer must not be engaged in other CPU-intensive tasks such as copying or downloading files.

In order to start manual compaction, follow the steps given below:

1. On the File menu, click Data File Management

2. Click the personal folders (PST) files that you want to compact and then click Settings

Note For Windows Vista, the default path of .pst files is drive:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook.

For Microsoft Windows XP or Microsoft Windows Server 2003, the default path of .pst files is drive:\Documents and Settings\user\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook.

1. Click Compact Now, click OK and then click Close

Due to exceeding of PST file size limit of 2GB, PST files often get corrupt which makes them inaccessible. This can result in loss of some important data. Make sure you don’t fall into such situation and if in case you do, use Kernel for PST- an excellent Outlook repair tool, that will recover every bit of data from your corrupt, damaged, broken or inaccessible PST files.

At times you might need to import Outlook PST data to an Exchange Server mailbox. In contrast to the earlier versions, Exmerge utility in Exchange 2007 is no longer supported for importing data from an Outlook PST.

For this to happen, you would have to use Import-Mailbox cmdlet (commandlet). The cmdlet conducts administrative tasks but it won’t allow you to import PST items if the file is corrupt. In case of corruption, you might receive error messages suggesting you to run Inbox Repair Tool (scanpst.exe).

The Import-Mailbox command is usually run through Windows Powershell- an extensible automation engine consisting of command prompt and related scripting language. Consider a situation when you try running Import-Mailbox command for a PST with the help of Windows PowerShell. During this time, you might come across one or more of the following symptoms:

• PowerShell reports that it has encountered a problem and needs to close

• Application event log reads a .Net Runtime 2.0 error

• You receive an error message saying- “Faulting application powershell.exe, version 6.0.5430.0, stamp 451acab4, faulting module olmapi32.dll, version 12.0.4518.1014, stamp 45428191, debug? 0, fault address 0×0024a22f.”

The reason behind all this happening is that the imported PST has gone corrupt. We suggest you to perform the following steps to resolve the existing issue:

1. Run Inbox Repair Tool (Scanpst.exe) for repairing the corrupt PST files. It is a hidden file and comes with MS Outlook.

2. If you have a recent backup available, then you can delete the corrupt PST and restore from the backup.

3. If you are able to access the corrupt PST file, then create a new PST and try importing data from the old PST

4. If in case your PST is not accessible and there is no backup available, then we suggest you to use third party PST repair utility.

Using third-party Outlook repair tool ensures you of accurate and effective PST recovery. It recovers all emails, contacts, calendar, drafts, notes, sent items, etc. from corrupt PST file.

It is a fact, that applications do crash in your working routine and Microsoft Outlook email client is no exception. At times, when users call to complain that they are unable to get their email, it becomes the responsibility of the administrator to set things right.

Outlook 2002 introduced the Safe Mode feature just like Windows Safe Mode; the Outlook 2002 counterpart enables Outlook to boot when it might fail at times. The Safe Mode enables Outlook to detect or repair Outlook or bypass the source of the problem which might expand over corrupted registry or abruptly behaving add-in.

When Outlook boots in Safe Mode, it shows a dialog box explaining the source of problem and prompts if you wish to continue loading the program in Safe Mode or attempt to start the application in a normal restart. If you allow Outlook to start in Safe mode, go to Help > About Microsoft Outlook and click Disabled Items.

This way you open the Disabled Items dialog box, which will enlist the items that Outlook has disabled to start in Safe Mode. Hence now you can attempt to resolve the problem, for example disable or remove an add-in. Now you can either start Outlook 2002 or any other Office XP application in Safe mode at any time. Hold the Control [Ctrl] key when starting Outlook. The program will now display a dialog box that gives you the option to start the application in Safe Mode.

There are times when you face PST file corruption and due to that your work get badly affected. In such situations, do not panic and take help of Kernel for Outlook. It is efficient Outlook repair software that is capable of sweeping away all your worries associated with PST file corruption. Software is available for free and instant download.