In the modern time, Microsoft Outlook has become the widely used software in all big or small organization to carry out flawless email communication. Collaboration of Outlook with Exchange Server is considered the key environment for business growth with a stable communication platform. Users may not always be connected to the internet (Exchange Server) when they are working on outlook, therefore an OST file is created on their local system to protect the data when they work in offline mode. This OST is used to store all the offline work and when connectivity is restored it automatically syncs with the server and both are update.
However, due to several causes OST file gets corrupt frequently and show few error codes whenever a user try to access Outlook profile. In the row, a very common error message prompts on Outlook screen-
‘Encounter a large number of conflict items with OST file’
The error message is received when the OST file gets corrupted and sync is not possible until OST file is not error free. We need to repair outlook OST file to fix this Outlook error.
Causes of OST Corruption
Corruption in an OST file can be caused due to unforeseen reasons like improper exit of MS Outlook, Interruptions in power failure, software updating process, oversized OST file, networking connection failure, synchronization error and virus attacks.
How to Repair Outlook OST File?
Microsoft Outlook provides two inbuilt Outlook repair tools-
- OST Integrity Checker (Scanost.exe) which can accurately repair all the synchronization issues related to OST files. But the dark side it doesn’t support Outlook 2010 and other higher Outlook versions.
- Inbox Repair tool (Scanpst.exe) that scans the OST files in the systems and checks them for integrity in the file structure
Both the utilities have different functionalities, inbox repair tool scans the OST files and checks to make sure the file structure in the system is correct without accessing the Inbox details present in the Microsoft Exchange server.
Just follow the below steps to repair outlook OST file using the above utilities.
Always create a backup of the OST file before you start with the recovery process. Then you need to close all the applications which are running on the system. Next you need to locate the above utility and allow it to repair OST file. After the repair process is completed, rename the new file and start Outlook to check if the file has been repaired.
The above method will not work if the file size of OST is high. So if the file is still damaged try the below steps-
- Close Outlook
- Navigate through Start -> Control Panel
- Switch to Classic View of the control panel if you are using Windows XP or higher versions and then search for Mail.
- After opening mail search for the Mail Setup dialog box and then for show profiles.
- Search for the damaged profile and remove it.
- After all the damaged profile are deleted search for Add to create a new profile. As per the settings on the server add a new email account.
- Open outlook and sync it with the server.
However, these all manual processes are time consuming and results are not reliable and there may be data loss too. Also if there are many OST files then it may take ages to repair all of them. Therefore, try a prominent third party Outlook OST repair tool like Stellar OST to PST converter, which is embedded with advanced error troubleshooting algorithm and scanning modes that provide complete recovery of OST file data and saves data into PST or other desired formats.
Let me know if you’ve faced any problem using the above procedure or this software.