Repair Outlook 2007 PST with ScanPST

Are you having problems with your PST (personal folders) in Outlook 2007? If so, there is a simple way to take care of any issue or corruption you may have with your PST. Outlook automatically includes a PST repair tool called ScanPST.

ScanPST can save your PST if you see this message:

FileName.pst file could not be opened. The file may not be compatible with this version of Outlook or it may be corrupted.

In Windows Vista, you may see an error message when you start Outlook 2007 that says:

<FileName>.pst file could not be opened

NOTE: These two things are very important to repair your PST, so do them first.

1. Make sure Outlook 2007 is closed
2. Locate the PST file that you will be repairing and note that location so you can get back to it later.

Once you have completed the previous two steps, navigate to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12 (where “C” is the letter of your hard drive) and find the SCANPST utility.

Double click on the ScanPST utility and the Repair window will open. Click the “Browse” button and navigate to the location where your PST lives and select the PST you want to repair.

The name of your PST will show in the window. Click the “Start” button to begin scanning your PST. There is no need to worry as this only does a scan on your PST and does NOT make any changes. This will only detect any problems.

The scan will go through 8 steps. The amount of time it will take to complete, depends on the size of your PST.

When the scan completes you will see the summary window of what the scan found. The important part is that it will tell you if you have any error in your PST.
Now you can repair your corrupt PST. I highly recommend making a backup of your PST before you repair just to be safe. So check the box to make a backup and click the “Browse” button to select a location for your backup. (Save the backup to your desktop since the repair will be fine and you can delete the backup when you are done.) Now click the “Repair” button to repair the PST.

The repair will process your PST and complete and you will see a confirmation message that the repair is complete.

You can now delete the backup that you made and saved to your desktop. Open Outlook 2007 and you shouldn’t see any more issues with your PST and Outlook 2007.