How to Use the Outlook Inbox Repair Tool (scanpst.exe)

How to Use the Outlook Inbox Repair Tool (scanpst.exe)

QUESTIONS THAT APPLY TO THIS TOPIC

  • “How do I run Outlook’s Inbox Repair Tool?”
  • “How do I repair corruption in my inbox?”
  • “I’m on the cloud and a bad connection kicked me off. Now Outlook won’t start. What do I do?” 

ANSWER

The Inbox Repair Tool is a small program that repairs corruption within the Outlook .PST and .OST files (which are databases of all your Outlook information). Over the course of time, these files can become corrupt through programming issues, broken connections over networks, and other causes. The Inbox Repair Tool can repair a “broken” Outlook database, putting it back into a state that Outlook can use, while recovering items that might have been damaged when the file was corrupted.

When to Run the Inbox Repair Tool

Typically, if you receive the following error, or one similar to it, you will want to run the Inbox Repair Tool.


You might also receive a message when starting Outlook that says “Errors have been detected in the file …” or “The file … is not an Outlook data file.” Both of these indicate the need to run the Inbox Repair Tool.

At other times, you might not receive an error at all, but Outlook will begin to behave erratically: Outlook might crash when you try to browse to a specific folder or send an item to it; multiple warning during a send/receive might occur; Outlook might close itself immediately after it starts. All of these are good indications that the Inbox Repair Tool should be run.

Locating the Inbox Repair Tool for your Outlook Version

The program name of the Inbox Repair Tool is scanpst.exe. It is a tool provided by Microsoft with Microsoft Office ® . However, Microsoft doesn’t create an icon or a start menu item for the program; you’ll need to manually locate and run it.

Here are the locations of the scanpst.exe program:

Outlook 2016/2019/Office 365

  • 32-bit Windows; C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\
  • 64-bit Windows; C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\

Outlook 2013

  • 32-bit Windows; C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15\
  • 64-bit Windows; C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office15\

Locating the PST/OST File

The PST (or OST) file is a database of all the items within Outlook. All your emails, contacts, calendar items, and anything else in Outlook are stored in this file. To run the Inbox Repair Tool, you’ll need to know the location of your PST or OST file.

Here is a list of locations for those files, depending on your version of Windows and Outlook:

Windows 10

  • Outlook 2013 and later:
    • C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook

Starting the Inbox Repair Tool

Now that you know the location of the Inbox Repair Tool and your Outlook database, you’re ready to start.

Close Outlook, and any other programs that might be using your email database file. Go to the location on your Inbox Repair Tool and execute the program scanpst.exe by double-clicking on it. The “Microsoft Outlook Inbox Repair Tool” will start:


Select the location of your PST/OST file using the Browse button in this window.

Note:  The “Local Settings” and “AppData” folders are hidden folders. To access these folders, you can type the path in the Address Bar or File Name field of the Explorer dialog that opens when pressing Browse …

After you have selected the PST/OST file to scan, click on the button labeled  Start . The Import Repair Tool will begin running. First, it will do an analysis of the file. This analysis can take a few minutes depending on the size of your PST/OST file and the level of corruption. The progress bar will indicate approximately how much of this is done for each of the eight phases.


When the analysis is done, the Inbox Repair Tool will give a small report of its analysis:


Do not proceed without selecting the option “Make backup of scanned file before   repairing”.    

Click on the button labeled  Repair  to begin repairing the corrupt file. Note that this process can take a while to complete—a PST/OST of 4GB in size might take as long as an hour to fully repair.

After the repair is finished, you’ll get a small pop-up window:


At this point, your PST/OST file is repaired and the existing problems should be resolved.


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