Relocating OST data files? – take this brief tour

Introduction

For effective email communication, individuals and businesses require a good email management system. A good emailing platform helps the businesses to survive in this cut-throat and competitive age of information technology. Here are some features that people want in any email platform.

The emails of the account should be available to the user instantly. Some email manager applications can have multiple types of accounts from different email servers. So, the mailboxes of these accounts should be active whenever the application is opened, and the user should be able to send/receive emails in a hassle-free manner.

The email communication through the internet follows some protocols for quick and simple communication. These protocols have some security features also. In addition, the email manager can also have some security precautions, because of which the faulty emails will not come into the mailboxes. The application will check emails and the attachments even before opening them.

The web-based email services support the email addresses of their type only. Like Google supports Gmail, Yahoo supports Yahoo Mail, and Microsoft supports Hotmail, etc. But the professional email clients like Outlook can support email accounts from all the platforms.

Apart from the email communication, the email manager should have other features for business tasks like contact management, calendar/events handling, archiving, backup, etc.

People are deeply influenced by MS Outlook email application because they are associating above depicted parameters with the email application. Microsoft Outlook started its journey from Outlook for MS-DOS and reached to the most robust and intelligent MS Outlook 2016 version.

MS Outlook is bundled with MS Exchange Server technology for offering extraordinary email, calendaring, task scheduling, contact management services, etc. It provides two most useful email formats, i.e. Outlook Data File (.pst) and Offline Outlook Data File (.ost) which eases the access to emails either from Exchange Server, Standalone machine, or both. Out of these two files, Offline storage facility creates the replica of email items stored on Exchange mailboxes on local machine. The idea behind creating a look-alike OST email items on local machine is to provide uninterrupted email accessibility in times of Exchange Server disconnection. However, automatic creation of OST folders on your hard-drive sometimes proves to be a disadvantageous as unexpected requirement occurs to save OST backups in a different drive partition or a hard disk.

Offline Outlook Data File or OST file is effectively created inside the computer’s hard drive by the work of MS Outlook and MS Exchange Server. Each Windows OS version stores OST file at slightly different locations. Have a look at the following information:

• OST file location in Windows 10, Windows 8/8.1, Windows 7, & Windows Vista C Drive: \Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook (For MS Outlook 2010 or Above)
• OST file location in Windows XP

C Drive: \Documents and Settings\%username%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

If you really want to change the default location of an OST file, then you can do so by using the MS Outlook email client. However, one must take careful steps while changing the location of OST as it has been seen that MS Outlook shows unpredictable behavior such as freezing of application and malfunctioning Outlook browse button, etc. which puts the OST email items under the scanner of corruption. Let us get acquainted with the OST file relocation process.

1. Close the MS Outlook email client.
2. Click Start → Control Panel or Press the Windows key, type Control Panel, and then press Enter.
3. Double-click the Mail icon. The Mail dialog box is displayed.
4. Click the E-mail Accounts tab, and then locate and select your Exchange account.
5. Click the Change option, and then clear Use Cached Exchange Mode.
6. Go to the More Settings option. Select the Advanced tab, and then click the Offline Folder File Settings option.
7. Click the Disable Offline Use option, and then click Yes.
8. Once again click the Offline Folder File Settings option.
9. Click the Browse button to set the OST file location. Click the OK button.
10. Click Yes to apply actions.
11. In the Cached Exchange Mode Settings field, select Use Cached Exchange Mode.
12. Click OK → Next → Finish.
13. Close all the dialog boxes.

In this way, you can move the OST file to a desired location while keeping the Exchange data files safe. Make sure that the Cached Exchange mode is disabled while relocating the OST data files. However, there is one more method by which you can relocate OST file. Apply some changes in Windows registries and OST file relocation gets facilitated for you. Check out the following steps:

1. Close the MS Outlook email client.
2. Press the Windows + R button, type regedit, and then press Enter.
3. Navigate through the following registry path: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\version number\Outlook.
4. Right-click the Outlook sub key, point to New, and then click the Expandable String Value option.
5. Specify ForceOSTPath. Press the Enter key.
6. Right-click the newly-created ForceOSTPath. Click the Modify option.
7. Specify OST file path for saving in the Value box. Click the OK button.
8. Exit the registry editor.

Entire OST file relocation sequence requires extreme precision and attention as any incorrect step would lead to OST email items corruption. During such procedures, if any kind of interruption happens, then the level of corruption couldn’t be tackled by manual troubleshooting procedures. Getting an intelligent and reliable third-party OST to PST converter application is a wise decision.

Solution

Kernel for OST to PST Converter is an expert and trustworthy utility that aims to resolve severe corruptions of OST file and engineers the conversion of OST file to PST file. The software is upgraded with intuitive email migration alternatives which enables the establishment of direct connection to popular web-based email apps, email servers, and cloud accounts to store repaired email items.

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