Recover Deleted Outlook Files with Ease
Many businesses rely on Microsoft Outlook as their communications messaging system. Data is sent to and from coworkers, customers, vendors, and other contacts. Much of this data is sensitive and important to keep.
Outlook users often keep their important emails saved within Outlook rather than saving important attachments, reports, communications, contracts, and other items to another location on their computer. This usually serves the user well. When they need to access the file or email, they simply go into Outlook and retrieve it.
However, entire Outlook mailboxes become corrupt all the time. In addition, accidental deletions are more common than you think and it can happen to you. If you rely on a backup, you could be in for a rude awakening when you discover that the backup was never set up to back up your Outlook PST files. It should be but there's a good chance it's not, especially if your company is too small to have an IT staff take care of details like that.
Outlook stores all of the information such as emails, tasks, meetings, contacts, notes, and log in files in files with the .pst extension.
You can recover Outlook files when corruption or data loss happens if you have the right tools. Microsoft provides a basic PST tool called the Inbox Repair Tool. Look for it under Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools. You can also search your system for: scanpst.exe.
You will need to know where the damaged PST file is stored. For Windows XP and 2000, look under: C:\Documents and Settings\
Run scanpst.exe and it will perform a variety of tests on your PST file. If prompted to make a backup, say "Yes." The utility will attempt to repair the file. You can alternate between scandisk.exe and scanpst.exe several times until neither returns an error. This process may be able to recover Outlook but it's not terribly user friendly and it doesn't always work.
If you want to recover Outlook with ease, skip scanpst.exe and get a data recovery software utility that can handle PST files. Restore the backup you made during the scanpst.exe process if you performed that step. In order to recover Outlook, your data recovery utility must be able to read the corrupt PST file, identify the data in this file, recover the data, and then save the data to a new PST file.
While this process sounds complicated, and it is, it doesn't mean you can't get through the process with ease. That's because a well designed software program will take care of the complexities for you.
Because processes such as scanpst.exe and scandisk.exe aren't nearly as effective as a good data recovery program, consider skipping the built-in utilities and downloading a demo version to see if you can recover Outlook files that way first. You have the best chance to recover Outlook when the disk isn't being exposed to processes that write data to it.
