While most users are aware that corruption of Microsoft Outlook PST files ' Personal Storage Tables, that store all the important Outlook data ' is a real possibility, not many of them take enough precautionary steps to avoid corruption or to avoid data loss. For example, a simple measure such as regular backups can well save the user mission critical data even if the original PST file were to get corrupted. If, unfortunately, you do not have backups of your PST file and the original file were to get seriously corrupted, then the only option available to you might be to use specialized recovery tools to repair Outlook and recover PST data.

 

It might be helpful to understand what exactly causes corruption in PST files. More often than not, software problems, virus attacks or hardware malfunctions result in some damage to PST files. Sudden power outages and unexpected system shutdowns too could cause errors in the PST files. Finally, improper shutting down of Microsoft Outlook could cause corruption in the PST file that is currently in use. Lesser-known causes for PST corruption are when a user upgrades his or her version of Outlook. Typically, when you upgrade to a new version of Outlook, you have to create a new PST as the PST in the older format may not be automatically upgraded or converted. Thus, if the original PST file becomes inaccessible due to some reason, you might have to repair Outlook to be able to open it and work on it.

 

Another well-known reason for Outlook PST corruption is the size limit placed on PST files in some versions of Outlook. In these versions, a PST file is not allowed to grow beyond 2 GB. This is because the designers of Outlook never imagined that users would need to store items that would be as large as 2 GB in size. However, with multimedia becoming an integral part of day-to-day communication, PST files very quickly reach and even grow beyond the 2 GB limit. This immediately corrupts the file and one has to use recovery tools to repair Outlook so as to reduce the size of the PST file.

 

Fortunately, Microsoft Outlook provides two very handy tools to easily recover from Microsoft Outlook PST corruption, no matter what the cause of corruption is. The first tool is called the Inbox Repair tool and is used when the PST file is damaged due to reasons such as software or hardware failures. On the other hand, if the PST file is inaccessible because it has exceeded the size limit of 2 GB, you could use the Outlook Crop Tool to reduce the size to a more manageable level. This of course means that you may end up losing some vital data.

 

If you are very particular about not losing any of your important Outlook data from a corrupted PST file, you should try to repair Outlook using more advanced software such as Advanced Outlook Repair from DataNumen.  This tool uses sophisticated scan and recovery methods that allow data to be recovered from fairly large PST files and restores them in the same structure as the original PST file.