Originally Posted by Gaucho100K
Robert, thanks a million for taking time to help me with this. I desperately need to get my Outlook back to normal and very much appreciate your kind gesture.
Some follow up questions from my side would be:
1) Im not sure what an Outlook profile is, but in any event, can I just create an identical profile with a new name to solve the problem? When I do this, do I need (have?) to delete the old profile?
2) Regarding scanning & repairing the PST file, how do I get to and run this scanpst.exe file you mention? I assume its not in the menu of Outlook, or...? My Outlook file is very old... Ive carried over my Outlook file from at least 2 previous versions of Outlook - I do this every time I switch laptops, so this is probably one of my issues.
3) Regarding the PST file, doesnt the detect and repair function in MS Office do this PST scanning and verifying or am I confusing features? Ive tried the detect and repair function a couple of times to no avail.
4) One option Im considering is just upgrading my MS Office Pro 2002 to the newer version 2003. If I choose to do this, will the re-installation also solve my corruption issues? I would expect the profile would perhaps be fixed, but if I choose to do the intelligent update installation that leaves my source data files (including PST email and contact files for Outlook) intact, perhaps I wont be addressing the corrupted PST file issue, right...?
Thanks again for your assistance with this. Im off to use the search/help function to see which fixes I can do myself.
Cheers,
Gaucho
there are some possible issues here. Are you on a network with a networked version of outlook and your data? Can you get to outlook via outlook web access.?
If yes, then you may have what is called and .ost file and not the pst file. Usually a network admin will setup your data file on the network, then set you up as a user on that network.
When you log into a computer on the network, it looks for a local version of the .ost file, which is the primary file that Outlook local client will look for. Isf there is not such a file, it will open the network version of your data file and display that.
A .pst file is a local copy of data, that remains local. As well, if you had a .ost file, the typical setup on your local laptop and have syncnonized to your local client/laptop, then all the data from the network is in your local .ost file.
When you connect to the network again, dialup or in the office it will sync any changes.
If THAT is the case, then once you do a sync with the network agian, you can safely (read, if you are confident or with the help of a network admin) fully delete the .ost file from your local laptop profile. taht can be found in C:\documents and settings\user name\ . . .ect. Just do a search for .ost and include search hidden.
once deleted if you outlook is setup correctly you can recreate it again, fresh and new and then do a new sync.
THIS is the file that is often corrupted. So, if that is the way your networking is setup then make sure to do a fix repair on THAT file.
Another point. with older outlook once this file got to be like 2-3 GB, then there were some clear problems. Also, it was a gross number of mails, like 15,000 or something and the applicatoin just puked.
Also, if you networking login has changed recently, you might be downloading all the .ost file from the network over and over again. this would indeed take a LONG time if hte file is large.