Microsoft Exchange Servers efficaciously handle business emails and are put into service in various corporate sectors. Professional users are cognizant about the fact that Exchange Servers are not free from faults. By the same token, some users would require to access their mailboxes and data from multiple devices and locations. It is not expedient that accessibility to Exchange Server can be maintained every time, everywhere.
As a resolve, Microsoft offered Exchange users a perk to work on their emails and Outlook items even in the absence of connectivity with the Exchange Server. OST files are Offline Storage Table files that are the clones of an Exchange user mailbox and are stored on the local machine. Whatever changes are made to the user mailbox or emails in the OST file get updated on the Exchange Server mailbox by synchronizing the .ost files with the server.
OST Corruption
Though, it does seem like a piece of cake to work both on-line and off-line on MS Outlook without the shackles of device or location dependency, there is a flip side to the coin as well. The OST files succumb to corruption owing to multifarious reasons like:
- Hardware failure (disk crash)
- Power failure (dirty shutdown)
- Abnormal Outlook termination
- Virus attack or Trojan malfunction
- Errors during synchronization
Resolution
These factors forestall the automatic synchronization of Outlook OST file with the MS Exchange Server. Such a situation of .ost file corruption calls for OST repair using Microsoft in-built utility 'Scanost.exe'. This utility is apt at repairing the .ost file in major cases of corruption; however, Scanost sometimes begets a situation of data loss, as it completely restructures the OST file and removes the items it fails to recognize. Therefore, it is admonished to keep a backup copy of the original OST file before running any utility to repair it.
As Scanost falls short to repair the OST file at times of severe corruption, a third party tool to convert OST to PST becomes imperative. Copious OST to PST Converter tools are available in the market that successfully recovers all the vital data from the corrupt OST files. Veracious third party software for OST to PST Conversion is “Stellar Phoenix OST to PST Converter”.
A staunch solution for OST corruption, this tool restores the original RTF and HTML formatting of messages. Prior to recovery, this software offers a preview of the user mailbox and items in a tree-view format. The newly created PST file can be imported into Outlook to regain access to the user mailbox and data. Crafted on the grounds of efficiency and user-friendliness, this software uses advanced mechanisms to recover data and supports MS Outlook 2010, 2007, 2003, 2002 and 2000.
