Corruption in email files is quite common in these days. If you’re using Outlook with Exchange Server, you must be familiar with OST. It’s an offline storage table used by Outlook for storing email messages and other mailbox content. Corruption can make your OST files inaccessible. Luckily Microsoft provides an Integrity check tool, aka scanost.exe, to handle corrupt OST files. It’s a built-in utility available in Outlook 2002, 2003 and 2007. The offline storage table, which is commonly known as OST file, is prone to corruption. Corruption may lead to inaccessibility of mailbox data which include email messages, calendars, contacts, tasks, notes, journals, etc. It’s quite obvious that corruption in computer files occur due to various unforeseen reasons. But the main reason behind OST file corruption is the interruption which takes place during the synchronization process with Exchange Server.
Users might be interested in Find Out The Most Common Reasons
Integrity Check Tool aka scanost.exe
Whenever you face errors or any symptom of corruption in your offline Outlook data file, you must try the scanost.exe, the Integrity check tool provided by Microsoft itself. Many computer professionals and experts strongly suggest to make the use of this built-in utility to scan corrupt OST files. It’s very simple to use scanost.exe to repair OST file, just follow the steps given below:
Step 1: First you need to locate the scanost.exe on your system. Once it’s located, double-click it to launch the Integrity check tool.
Step 2: The Microsoft Outlook Inbox Repair Tool window will appear.
Step 3: Select the profile which contain corrupt OST file.
Step 4: Now select the appropriate option. Don’t forget to check the box Repair Errors in order to resolve the issues.
Step 5: Finally click Begin Scan to start the scanning process of corrupt OST file.
Step 6: Within a few seconds, you will receive OST repair successfully message.
Your OST file is repaired now. You can try to open it.
Unluckily, the scanost.exe tool is not available in MS Outlook or any later version. Also, Microsoft doesn’t guarantee the 100% result or repairing OST files. In case of severe corruption, the Integrity check tool may fail to repair OST files. In such situation, you can try a third-party OST Recovery tool that can repair OST file and recover your mailbox data from it.
You might also be interested in OST to PST Conversion – Manually & Professionally
