Outlook 97-2000 pst conversion - ANSI to Unicode

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.