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Inbox Repair Tool

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by ronald.russman

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I was recently asked to recover a personal folder (*.pst) in MS Outlook that was almost 1GB in size. The user had setup delivery of Email directly into her personal folders and her Hard drive filled up while she wasn't looking. The .pst file was damaged and I attempted to run the Inbox Repair tool after moving the file to a network folder. The repair tool reported over 1100 errors and failed to repair the file. What are the limitations of this tool and how does it work?

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by brasslet

The Inbox Repair tool will correct minor errors.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q197315 has information re: this tool and Outlook 2000. There are other articles in the Knowledge Base about this as well. The tool doesn't change much from version to version, if I recall correctly.

Just an opinion, but I'd strongly discourage this use of .pst files. There are many drawbacks to this, the problem your seeing is only one of them. Users who care about their mail are crazy to do this. If she hasn't been backing up that .pst daily, she might have lost everything. When the mail is kept on Exchange and backed up as it should be, this wouldn't occur. If she wants an offline copy of mail, synchronizing to an offline folder (.ost) is the right way to go. Offline folders have size limits etc. just like .pst, but at least when they break you can easily recreate them AND your using Exchange as intended.

by ronald.russman

I appreciate and totlay agree with this answer except that we have 5000 users and they have to keep things on their hard drive. My question refers to the abilities of the inbox repair tool. What are the limits? What is the largest .pst file that can be repaired? Is there a limit to the number of errors that can be fixed? Is it limited by the physical memory or hard drive space, or what?

by brasslet

The tool has no limits to the size of file or how many errors it can fix. It is limited in scope in other ways, however. Strongly urge you to look at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q197315 and other KB articles to get details, too many to list here.

You can reject again if you like, but you should fix the root cause of this problem. It is crazy to use .pst files for delivery. If your 5000 users need offline access, then have them use .ost files. For every reason theycan name for using .pst files this way, I can give a more reliable method. The method they currently employ is only going to lead to lost mail and frustration that no knowledge of the Inbox repair tools can fix.

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