Formation of Exchange Server account by an administrator results in creation of mailbox that can be accessed with Outlook. The mailbox contains emails, contacts, notes, sent items, deleted items, notes, calendar/appointments, etc. which gets saved in an EDB file. The user can not only access the data but can configure a new email as well. Although, the email will not be sent until the connection with Exchange Server is resumed. But, when the Exchange Server is down, then the mailbox becomes inaccessible to the user.
OST files are important and safe, as they have an offline replica of your Exchange account. If your OST file becomes corrupted, then it can affect your business workflow and productivity. In such situations, ScanOST becomes a handy tool. It checks the integrity of data and removes the corruption from it.
Steps to execute OST file recovery
To utilize scanost.exe, the user must make sure that all Outlook related files along with application must be closed and then, launch scanost.exe to initiate the OST file recovery procedure. The tool will also show the message to quit Outlook before performing a scan with the OST Integrity Check tool. Follow the steps mentioned below to recover OST files:
- Step 1: After launching the application, the Inbox Repair Tool window will display on the user’s screen listing Outlook profiles created by user.
- Step 2: Select the particular profile that carries corrupted OST file.
- Step 3 In OST Integrity Check window, choose the folders or files and tick on Repair errors checkbox.
- Step 4: After Scanning hierarchy, click the Begin Scan option to initiate scanning of chosen OST files.
- Step 5:After successful completion of the scanning process, user will receive a message, “The scan is complete. See the OST Integrity Check message in your Deleted Items folder for more details.”
Limitations of method
However, this method may not prove to be successful all the time ScanOST.exe works only when files have been corrupted due to synchronization issue. Besides this, it has few more drawbacks such as:
- Cannot work on severe corruption issues (hardware issues and software issues).
- Not incorporated in MS Outlook 2010 and later version to fix OST file issues.
- May provide minimal output ins some synchronization issues
- Can affect the integrity of already corrupted OST files
Conclusion
OST files are saved offline on your system. These files can get easily corrupted due to issues while syncing when connected to Exchange Server. You can fix corrupted OST files and convert them to PST file format with the help of a professional tool. We suggest using Kernel for OST to PST tool for the same. This tool can even recover your lost data.
