Fix Your Broken Outlook Personal Folders (PST) File
If you use Outlook and you've noticed it being excessively slow or just having errors, you should probably scan and repair your Personal Folders file for any problems. It's sorta like checkdisk for your email.
Repairing Your PST File
To repair your PST file, you'll have to open the Scanpst.exe utility that's included by default with Outlook. The only problem is that there's no shortcut to it, so you'll have to find it in the Outlook folder.
Open up explorer and then browse down to the following folder for Outlook 2007:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12
Or one of these folders for Outlook 2003 and earlier (thanks to Mike in the comments):
C:\Program Files\Common Files\System\Mapi\1033
C:\Program Files\Common Files\System\MSMAPI\1033
Once you open up the utility, you'll have to find the location of your PST file by clicking the Browse button. If you don't know the location, there are instructions for figuring out the location further down in this article.
Click on the Start button to start the scan…
It will take a while to scan the file, and you'll get a report at the end telling you whether you have errors in the file.
Click on the Repair button, and after a while you'll finally get the "Repair complete" message.
If you are curious what was actually repaired during the process, you'll find a text file in the same directory as your PST file with the same name as the PST file.
Most of the information in the file is pretty cryptic… so I'm not sure reading it will help all that much.
Find Your Outlook PST File Locaton
If you just have a single PST file created automatically by Outlook, there's a standard location under your user profile directory. Open up an explorer window, and then paste in the following into the address bar:
%appdata%\Microsoft\Outlook
You should see your PST file in the list, usually called Outlook.pst at least in the later versions of Outlook. If you've created a new personal folders file, it might be in a different location.
Find Location of Outlook PST in Non-Standard Location
Sometimes your PST file will be in a different location, for a number of reasons.. for instance if you created a second PST you would have been prompted to save it somewhere.
If you can actually open Outlook, right-click on your personal folders location, and then choose Properties.
On the properties screen, click the Advanced button.
Now you'll see the location of the file in the Filename field. As a bonus, you can also compact the folders from here (although you shouldn't compact it until it's repaired first)
It's well worth it to scan your PST file every so often so you don't lose data. Of course… you should be backing up your files as well.
On office 2003 and earlier and windows xp and earlier it is actually located here: C:\Program Files\Common Files\System\MSMAPI\1033
MS support link giving the details about scanpst: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/287497
Thanks for the clarification… I only have Outlook 2007 installed so I didn't really think that through. Updated the article!
I found it here: C:\Program Files\Common Files\System\Mapi\1033. I have Outlook 2002
@Andy
Microsoft must be playing hide the utility… they just keep moving it! =)
Download this…http://www.howto-outlook.com/products/outlooktools.htm
Compacting your PST when you've deleted items (and emptied the Recycle Bin) is another good idea for keeping the overall size down - these files don't always self-optimize, and recapturing the whitespace within the file left when messages are deleted can do wonders for speed and overall reliability, especially when you consider the general rule with PSTs: the larger the PST, the more likely it is to become corrupt.
@onionose
The OutlookTools utility is great, but for this purpose all it does it help you launch ScanPst by giving you a button. You'd probably be better off creating a shortcut to Scanpst.exe and launching it that way.
I definitely recommend OutlookTools for other reasons, such as clearing search data and MRU lists:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto.....sed-lists/
I have found scanpst not to work now and then..
Microsoft does this very stupidly. Mail messages should be stored as individual files - build an index from those and then you can recreate it any time you mess it up.
Most of the problems with pst's come from users not emptying their deleted items folder and the pst gets larger and larger and larger.. and eventually breaks.
If outlook is running very slow and nothing seems to resolve the issue then scanpst works like a charm. On a computer at work someone kept complaining about outlook 2k7 being slow. It would take 30+ seconds to click from one email to another. After running scanpst on each of the PST files multiple times (until it no longer gives an error) it pretty much resolved the issue.
I also setup auto archive for this person. She had over 20k emails in her main pst file's inbox. Just plain scary if you ask me.
Someone needs to come up with a single backup/compactor/check/repair/scheduler utility for Outlook. It needs to be able to have multiple backups, handle multiple PST files, and the option to run completely unattended (ie: shutdown Outlook, do its thing, restart Outlook, all via its own scheduler).
So far Retrospect Backup is the only backup utility I've found that's smart enough to shut down Outlook and actually check to make sure it's properly and completely shut down before proceding, but it's gross overkill just for backing up PST files, and doesn't do the compacting/checking/repairing or start Outlook back up again when it's done.
Wow, I've just checked my email files,(which I've never had auto archive on until today), and I had 2.2g in there. I guess that goes from plain scary to horrifying.
RAN
If you want to speed up booting of Outlook 2000 just copy the pst file, delete the original and rename the copy. The main reason for slow bootup is fragmentation of the pst file so simply copying it and renaming the copy speeds everything up.
I am hopeful that your suggestions will work…except i've tried all of the above and I have gotten to the point where I can hit "Repair" in the Inbox Repair Tool but then the Inbox Repair Tool no longer wants to respond. It freezes. Is this normal?
I spoke too soon…the instructions are brilliant! The Inbox Repair Tool had repaired the problems except that I did not notice the new dialog box appeared behind my internet explorer page stating that the files were repaired.
Thank you all for your help. It is 1:30am and it has taken me 7 hours to resolve this issue (but 1/2 hour after I read everyone's comments above).
Now I can go to sleep.
Cheers!
Thanks for the help!! I uninstalled a trial version of MS office 2007 and installed a full version of 2003 on my Vista machine. I kept getting a message of outlook not being able to open my .pst file. I ran this and it worked perfectly! Thanks again!!
What a relief to get excellent advice after all the research I had been doing proved fruitless. Had rescued a .pst file off my father-in-law's hard drive (Windows errors couldn't be fixed and would not start the OS) and couldn't get it to open. After hours of trying other suggestions online (I admit it, I didn't know what version Outlook he had) I finally found this, and got instant results. Thanks once again for putting this information online for others to use.
After running scanpst.exe, outlook still won't boot, saying that the personal folders file was not closed properly, and then it all shuts down.
Thanks
I'm getting the "Outlook.pst is not a personal folders file" message when I try to open Outlook. I had a ton of emails (not knowing there was a size limtation), and now I can't locate my outlook.pst file on my computer. It's gone! How can I use the scanpst utility if there is no pst file to repair? I've gotten the "would you like to archive your older emails" message in Outlook previously, which I've clicked "yes" to…so does that mean they're stored somewhere on my computer? I'm completely confused….any help or direction would be appreciated!
when i tried to use the SCNPST it said it does not recognize the file (while it is pst) and no information can be recovered.
What can i do about it? I really need my email back!
Just want to say thanks!
Great info…my hard drive failed but I'd backed everything up to an external drive the month before. Wnen I restored, Outlook can't seem to find the file for my old emails. What am I doing wrong?
Thanks you very much for your help in fixing my broken Outlook Personal Folders (PST) files. The procedure, although lengthy (waiting for the computer to do it's thing), worked like a "champ".
I am getting an error as " It is not a personal folder file " while my file is a .pst file . How to recover the file. I saw above somebody has asked same question but not able to get what he did to get PST open.
Please help me
In continutation to above message I tried scanning the PST with scanPST.exe but it gives me error as "not able to recognize the file"