Repair PST Blog

RSS Reader for Microsoft Outlook 2003

DD Expert — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 13:15:44 +0000

Built-in RSS reader of Microsoft Outlook 2007 allows you to subscribe to RSS Feeds and then read blogs or follow links for further information. Whenever you see a link to a feed, or an RSS icon such as the one at the top of this page, just click. Outlook 2007 automatically subscribes you to that RSS Feed.The users of Outlook 2003 must be looking for such option or an upgrade from Microsoft for Outlook 2003 having this feature. However, we do not see any thing of this type getting released by Microsoft. But there is a free utility which allows you to track and manage all of your RSS content within Outlook 2003.Now you can

Synchronize your subscription(s) with other readers.
Forward posts to colleagues and friends through outlook like email.
Read your subscription(s) offline, as it would download the subscription(s) like emails.
Post directly to your blog.

With NewsGator, you can get all your news and information delivered right to your Microsoft Outlook® folders. More Information: http://www.newsgator.com/Individuals/NewsGatorInbox/Default.aspx

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Outlook pst file corruption when used over LAN or WAN

DD Expert — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 23:09:19 +0000

Generally In an enterprise where file server is used to store emails messages for users, having there data storage path redirected to these storage servers, either a standalone server or an array inside a NAS box is used to store personal storage files i.e. PST. The trend of using PST files over network either on a LAN or WAN is not the recommended way of accessing a PST file by Microsoft.
According to Microsoft their MS-Exchange team never had plans to design PST file, but to have a user maintain a copy of emails in his local machine they provided support in terms creating a PST file locally. A .pst file is a file access driven process to store messages, where Operating System sends special commands to the file system to read and write the data to disk. This methodology is not intended to work over network as then Outlook tries to send file access commands over network and this creates lot of overheads on the server and file system managing those files on hard drives. In case when the connection fails or configurationally any changes happen to the file read or write requests, the .pst file gets corrupted.
DD PST Repair can repair such .pst files with ease and valuable data can be rescued from those corrupted .pst files to new healthy .pst files created by PST Repair software.

Technorati Tags: outlook pst corruption lan repair recovery deleted 2gb email 2gpst scanpst

Outlook 97-2000 pst conversion - ANSI to Unicode

DD Expert — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 22:33:32 +0000

Outlook 2003 with its launch brought a new file format to store message with Unicode formatting, with Unicode formatting support it has no limitations for the number of emails or entries to store per folder or in terms of .pst file size by overriding previous 2 GB file size limit.

The old format is popularly known as “Outlook 97-2000 .pst file” and is commonly referred as ANSI .pst file, which has limit for size i.e. 2 GB.

In most of the cases when a .pst files gets corrupted, we perform series of operations by running tools bundled along with Outlook such as Inbox Repair tool or PST2GB, but as discussed in earlier posts that they are not helpful. Similarly converting an ANSI .pst file to Unicode format is not a solution and might not work. However, such attempts may further aggravate the corruption. Microsoft doesn’t provide any tool to perform such operation on corrupt .pst file or .pst file with 2GB file size limit. There are some tools available in market claim to work in such cases, but we have received many number .pst cases where people have tried this operation once and never have successful.

Finally, we would suggest users to consider tool such as DD PST Repair which works in READ – Only mode, and is always successful in recovering lost data from any type of .pst file corruption.

Common Outlook pst problems

DD Expert — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 07:30:13 +0000

Common Outlook .pst problems

We would like to point out some of the unavoidable questions or issues that most of the Microsoft Outlook users put across to newsgroups of Microsoft or various support forums about Outlook personal storage files i.e. (.pst).

Standalone outlook application which is not working under C/W (Corporate or Workgroup mode) mode stores all its data inside a .pst file. It is quite easy to locate a .pst file using Outlook, all you have to do is right-click the Outlook Today folder and choose Properties. In the properties dialog box, click the “Advanced” button to know the file name and disk storage path of your .pst file.

This helps you to take the backup of your .pst file, you just need to close outlook and browse the path you just checked and then create a copy of your .pst file. In case if you have moved the file from its original path Outlook would not be able to access the .pst file. However, you can again redirect Outlook to the new path in the same fashion you checked the path. You can use the option “Mail” in Windows Control Panel as well.

Default Store path for Outlook in Windows 2000 / XP
%drive%:\Documents and Settings\user\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

Default Store path for Outlook in Windows Vista
%drive%:\Users\user\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook

Most common Outlook problems

Corruption caused due to 2 GB .pst file size limit.
Corruption of .pst file when used over network.
Case of accidentally deleted messages, contacts and notes.
Corruption inside the .pst file header.
Corruption caused due to compacting of the .pst file.

In our coming posts we would be covering all the above mentioned problems in detail.

Repair corrupt 2GB .pst files

DD Expert — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 12:57:37 +0000

In Outlook 2000 the .pst file size was limited to a 2 GB. If a .pst file goes beyond this size limit, .pst file becomes corrupt and retrieval of emails and data from this oversized .pst file becomes difficult. Inbox repair tool provided with Microsoft office suite is not sufficient in repairing oversized files. Running compact operation on an oversized file and running inbox repair tool may result in loss of important attributes.

To repair a .pst file corrupt due to 2gb size limit, use DD PST Repair an advanced Outlook Mail Recovery software, which can repair the .pst file and would create a healthy .pst file which can be imported back to Microsoft Outlook.

Outlook offers no integrated procedure to reduce a 2GB PST file. However, Microsoft provides a tool, PST2GB, which truncates the data between 30 to 50mb and the truncated data contains crucial data which is not recoverable. Hence we should avoid using such tools.

DD PST Repair doesn’t truncates the file, instead it creates a blank new .pst file and creates all those entries again and in this process all the junk entries and unwanted temporary data is left with the old .pst and user gets a new healthy .pst file. Before attempting anything we suggest that you should always take the backup of your corrupted .pst file and than run the demo version of DD PST Repair to confirm the chances of recovery.Demo Version of DD PST Repair is available on this link PST Repair Demo