Repair an Outlook mailbox with scanpst.exe

Outlook 2003, 2007, and 2010 have come with a handy little tool called scanpst.exe. Have you tried opening a mailbox and received the message “Errors have been detected in the file xxxx.pst?”. With this tool you can fix your pst for free.

The free tool is located in one of the following directories, depending on which version of Microsoft Office you have:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office11   (Office 2003)

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12   (Office 2007)

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14   (Office 2010)

Scanpst will first scan your pst, then before it starts repair it will ask to create a backup. Creating a backup GREATLY increases repair time so I’d HIGHLY suggest making a copy BEFORE starting the scanpst process.

**TIPS for pst’s: PST’s (aka Personal Folders/Archive Folders) are very sensitive and started corrupting very easily when they grow over 4GB+. It better to have multiple Personal Folders of smaller sizes then one large one. If the large one corrupts then your out of business but if the smaller one corrupts then it’s less of an impact (plus it’s less likely to happen).