Outlook 2003 - PST file corruption. Is it X1 ?

[Carol Haynes]

Thanks Dirhael and welcome to the forum.

[Dirhael]

Thanks Dirhael and welcome to the forum.

-Carol Haynes (October 10, 2006, 04:23 PM)

Thanks for the welcome

[Darwin]

Just to bump/add to this discussion. Over the last week or so, I've been having repeated warnings from Outlook about another programme that was accessing my pst closing unexpectedly and my pst being unavailable. I've disabled X1 and for the last two hours all has been well. My pst is at 218 MB, so I'm also going to try dirhael's advice and create a new pst  I cannot afford to lose any data!

At any rate, with real regret, I am leaning toward walking away from X1/YDS.

[Clive]

Hi Everyone,
I'm not in the same league as some of you guys - just a general everyday end user, but I use and prefer LookOut for my indexing and searching of Outlook and other files. It doesn't have continuous indexing, but I found that it would find things that X1 wouldn't. Anyway, just my 10 cents worth.

[Darwin]

Hi Clive,

Lookout is what I've reverted to from X1 (used Lookout a lot two years ago). Two things to note about the situation I described about X1 and pst files: I haven't had a problem since I uninstalled X1 (actually, I haven't had a problem since I completely disabled X1, though I've since uninstalled it) and X1 is about to release a significant update that is supposed to fix, among other things, problems with Outlook (though neither of the issues reported in this thread are mentioned specifically). Note, the Upgrade Considerations:

- Beginning with the Enterprise Client Version 5.6, all network functionality will be restricted in the client by default.
- Customers who upgrade to 5.6 will lose access to network drives, un-cached Exchange email and Public Folders.
- If you would like to upgrade to 5.6 but need access to these features, please contact your administrator to have these features enabled using Microsoft Group Policy.
- Users upgrading to the Enterprise Client Version 5.6 will be forced to re-index

[Darwin]

zwr - are you connected in any way with Advanced Outlook Repair? We have no problem with people discussing their own products here at DC, but you should clearly identify your affiliation... otherwise it's easy to assume that you are just a spammer! Two posts in a week and both point readers to the same program, with no disclaimer...

[jgpaiva]

I've removed the spam post and banned the user Darwin referes in the post above this one. While his first post didn't look like a serious spam (there weren't other posts like it on the web), there are tens of posts like the one he did on this thread.

[Darwin]

zlatan24 - Recovery Toolbox for Outlook is not free, it's $49.95! Ironically, I downloaded and tried this software a couple of days ago because my wife needed to access a backup of her ost file on a non-Exchange computer and I was looking for ways to convert it to pst and open it. Recovery Toolbox for Outlook seems to work, but it only allows you to recover the first five items in an ost when in trial mode. In my wife's case, these five items were contacts, which is not particularly useful...

Two further points: at $49.95 this tool is easily $150 cheaper than its competitors (from my search of a few days ago) and two, a caveat, when you DO convert an ost to pst it seems to automatically insert the contents into your current pst. Thus, when I opened Outlook on my computer after running the tool, the five items from my wife's ost file showed up as new items in my inbox! I suspect that this is something that can be adjusted/controlled in the options when runninng the application, but it really shouldn't be the default behaviour. I would have thought that a pst file would be generated and that the user would be prompted for a save location and that it would then be up to the user to open the resulting pst file from within Outlook, without touching the default pst!

At any rate, I'd be interested if you are aware of a free version. I can't see it on the page you linked to, though...

[bob99]

1st I'm not affiliated with any of these companies.
I have been trying to locate just a pst viewer of some type.  Have you any experience with http://www.outlookconversion.com/
I'm sure "just a pst viewer" isn't as simple as it sounds.  Over the past year I have had to back-up and move old emails to an external drive.
On ocassion I need to go back and look for something in one of those back-ups.  I would rather not have to import all of them back looking for one or two.
Is Recovery Toolbox or Outlookconversion the way I need to go or is there something else?

[provinsin]

I have recentaly lost my PST file due to the corruption.I have search on Google "outlook pst repair software" and found Stellar Phoenix Outlook PST repair software. This software helps me to recover my lost PST file.You can try this software may be it will help you out to recover your lost PST file.

[SKA]

Maybe already posted/known to you all, FWIW I saw at www.slipstick.com/outlook a link to PSTCompress which helps reduce large pst files

Ska

[Carol Haynes]

a caveat, when you DO convert an ost to pst it seems to automatically insert the contents into your current pst. Thus, when I opened Outlook on my computer after running the tool, the five items from my wife's ost file showed up as new items in my inbox!

-Darwin (April 01, 2009, 11:37 AM)

The contacts appeared in your Inbox ???? Doesn't sound like a good recovery tool if they don't manage to place contacts into a contacts folder.

If I have misunderstood there is a simple solution to your problem - go to Control Panel / Mail and create a new local profile for Outlook. This creates a new empty PST file and you can extract stuff to that profile instead. You should then end up with a complete self contained PST file.

[Darwin]

The contacts appeared in your Inbox ???? Doesn't sound like a good recovery tool if they don't manage to place contacts into a contacts folder.

-Carol Haynes (April 04, 2009, 04:58 AM)

Good point! Don't know why that didn't occur to me 

My wife's OST file is for work - they took her notebook over a month ago to replace the harddrive and still have it... The tech guy they assigned to the computer was sick the first week or so, they replaced the HD, then discovered some other unspecified problem, and now the tech guy is on three weeks vacation... At any rate, point is that she's not willing to spend money to get at her e-mail and her employer is unlikely to cover the expense for her. Afterall, all she really needs to do is to copy the OST file onto a thumbdrive and open it from within Outlook on a computer at work. Difficulty is that she is not very teck savvy.

Anyway, thank you for the suggest re: empty PST file. If I do wind up recovering the contents of her OST for her I'll remember to do that