Outlook 2016 Inbox Repair Tool
Oliver Parkes
In the Inbox Repair tool, type the path and the file name of your personal folders (.pst) file or select Browse to locate the file by using the Windows file system, and then select Start.
These recovered folders are usually empty because this is a rebuilt .pst file. You should also see a folder named Lost and Found. This folder contains folders and items that the Inbox Repair Tool recovered. Unfortunately, items that are missing from the Lost and Found folder may be beyond repair.
If you are satisfied with the information that you recovered, you are finished. However, if you want to try to recover additional information, go to the Recover repaired items from the backup file (Optional) section.
If you could not open your original Personal Folders (.pst) file before you ran Inbox Repair Tool, the following procedures may not work. If it does not work, then unfortunately, you will be unable to recover any additional information. If you could open the file, the following procedure may help you recover additional items from your damaged Personal Folders (.pst) file.
When you run Inbox Repair Tool, the option to create a backup of the original Personal Folders (.pst) file is automatically selected. This option creates a file on your hard disk that is named File name.bak. This file is a copy of the original File name.pst file with a different extension. If you think that you are still missing items after following the steps in the previous section, you can try to recover additional information from this backup file by following these steps:
Remember that the backup file was the original corrupted file, and you may find that you cannot recover anything other than what was recovered in the Lost and Found folder. If you cannot import the Newname.pst file into Outlook, unfortunately you have lost all the information that is not in the Lost and Found folder.
ScanPST mostly validates and corrects errors in the internal data structures of a .pst file. The .pst file is a database file. Therefore, structures such as BTrees and reference counts, are checked and repaired as necessary. These low-level objects have no knowledge of the upper-level structures, such as messages, calendar items, and so on, that are built upon them.
If ScanPST determines that a specific block of the structure or table is unreadable or corrupted, ScanPST removes it. If that block was part of a specific item in Outlook, the item will be removed when it is validated.
You may not expect this behavior, but the removal of the item is appropriate given the circumstances. Also, this specific kind of situation is rare, and it will always be entered in the ScanPST log file.
As soon as the recipient table is validated to guarantee recipients that are formatted correctly, ScanPST makes any changes that are required to synchronize these valid recipient table contents to the recipient properties on the message. ScanPST also guarantees that the message's parent folder refers to a valid folder. The following message properties are checked to make sure that they follow valid data formats:
If the submit flags indicate that the message is marked as submitted, this property must exist. If the submit flags do not indicate that the message is marked as submitted, the time is set to Now.
No validation is explicitly done on body-related properties or on subject-related properties, except the implicit low-level validation that this article discusses earlier. The recipient display properties are changed to be consistent with the recovered recipient table. As soon as this operation is complete, other algorithms are run to collect all the orphaned messages and to put them in an Orphans folder.
The Inbox Repair tool doesn't connect or analyze any data stored in an Exchange mailbox. The tool only looks for errors (corruption), and if there are any, gives you the opportunity to allow the tool to fix those errors. If you can't start the Inbox Repair tool, you should try to repair your Outlook program.
In the Folder Pane, you might see a folder named Recovered Personal Folders that contains your default Outlook folders or a Lost and Found folder. Although the repair process might recreate some of the folders, they may be empty. The Lost and Found folder contains any folders and items recovered by the repair tool that Outlook can't place in their original structure.
You can create a new Outlook Data File and drag the items in the Lost and Found folder into the new data file. After you've moved all the items, you can remove the Recovered Personal Folders (.pst) file, including the Lost and Found folder. To create a new Outlook Data File, see Create an Outlook Data File.
If you can open the original Outlook Data File, you might be able to recover additional items. The Inbox Repair tool creates a backup file with the same name as the original, but with a .bak extension, and saves it in the same folder. There may be items in the backup file that you might be able to recover that the Inbox Repair tool couldn't.
In other cases, you might get recommended to use this tool when you are suffering from some specific symptoms such as (but not limited to), Outlook crashing upon displaying a folder or writing data to it, mspst.dll errors in the Event Viewer, import/export not completing, several send/receive errors or view settings not being maintained.
This guide helps you locate the Inbox Repair Tool for your version of Outlook, walks you through the repair process and gives recommendations what to do to when the Inbox Repair Tool fails and how to prevent pst-file corruptions from happening in the future.
When you start the Inbox Repair Tool (scanpst.exe), the first thing it prompts you for is the location of the pst-file to scan. This path is revealed in the startup error or otherwise the default locations are as follows;
After you have selected the pst-file to scan, you can press the Start button. At this point, nothing will happen to your pst-file yet; scanpst will do an analysis first. This analysis consists out of 8 phases of which some can take quite a bit longer to complete than others depending on the size and level of corruption of the file.
Before you continue to the actual repair process, make sure you have a backup of the pst-file. If you do not have a backup already, make sure that you have the option set to make a backup before proceeding (selected by default).
After pressing the Repair button, the actual repair process will start and go through the 8 phases again. With a very large pst-file (larger than 4GB) and a slower hard disk, this process can sometimes take longer than half an hour.
Note:
When the repair process starts, it could appear that it will hang directly (Not Responding in Title Bar). In reality, it is not hanging but making a copy of your pst-file in the background or already has started the repair process. Depending on the size of your pst-file and the speed of your hard disk, this can take a while.
If the repair process fails, try running it again. If it fails repeatedly, but you can still access the file in Outlook, you can create a new pst-file in Outlook and copy over its contents. For step-by-step instructions see; Scanpst.exe keeps finding issues.
If your pst-file is around 1.8GB in size and Outlook refuses to open it or to write to it then it is quite likely that you are using an ANSI formatted pst-file. This file format was the default (and only) file format in in Outlook 2002/XP and previous and has a file size limit of around 1.8GB.
If you can still open the pst-file in Outlook, then it is recommended to copy the contents to a new Unicode pst-file.
If you can no longer open the file in Outlook, then you must use the pst2gb tool to truncate the pst-file first.
When you get CRC errors upon trying to copy the pst-file in Explorer or open it in Outlook, you usually have a failing hard disk which should be dealt with immediately. For instructions see; CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check) errors on pst-file.
The Lost and Found folder is created during a repair when items have been found for which it was impossible to determine their original folder or when the folder structure within the pst-file got lost completely.
When such a corruption in a pst-file exists, it is highly recommended to start with a new pst-file and copy over the recovered contents to that pst-file. This process is similar as in; Scanpst.exe keeps finding issues.
Preventing is better than repairing of course. While there have been a lot of precautions built into Outlook to prevent pst-file corruptions, there are a couple of common causes which may result in corruptions in the pst-file;
Before it attempts to repair a file, the tool automatically creates a backup. But you may want to have your own backup as an additional safety precaution. To find the location of the PST or OST file, open Outlook and click the File menu. Click the button for Account Settings and then select the command for Account Settings (Figure A).
At the Account Settings window, click the tab for Data Files. Examine the path for the file you wish to scan and open it in File Explorer. Close Outlook. Then simply create a backup copy of the file. If you bump into an error about the file being locked when trying to back it up, make sure Outlook and any applications that use or integrate with Outlook are closed. If necessary, open Task Manager to check for any programs that need to be shut down (Figure B).
With the correct PST or OST file listed, click the Start button. The tool goes through eight phases. Assuming the file is corrupt, the tool will stop at some point and tell you that it found errors in the file. Clicking the Details button may or may not provide more information. Either way, click the Repair button (Figure D).
The tool will then display a notice telling you when the repair is complete. Click OK. Run the tool again to see if your PST or OST file now passes the test. If additional errors are found, click the Repair button again (Figure E).
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