2GB PST File in Outlook 2000/2003

[Ben]

Hi,

I'm trying to help my father who phoned me yesterday and told me his
Outlook 2000 client wouldn't receive any emails.

When I went around last night I found that the PST file had hit the
magic 2GB limit. So I tried running the 2GB crop tool (http://
support.microsoft.com/kb/296088) cropping 25mb from the PST, then
running the SCANPST repair tool over the PST file, however when you
try and do the repair it gets through all 8 phases, then errors with
"an error has occurred which caused the repair to be stopped. changes
may have been made to the scanned file" I then tried opening the PST
in Outlook but get told that its "not compatible with this version of
Personal Folders Service service".

I've tried doing the crop tool again, this time removing 150mb,
running the repair again, but still the same error message. We have
now tried upgrading Outlook 2000 to 2003 (entire Office suit as well),
but even with a 1.9GB PST Outlook 2003 still errors with "Outlook.pst
is not compatible with this version of Personal Folders Service
service".

I'm not sure what else to try! Should I try cropping even more of the
PST? Or can anyone suggest another solution?

Many thanks

Ben

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Yes, try cropping even more; even more than half of it if you have to. Just
try to find that "sweet spot" for your pst-file.
If scanpst.exe fails to complete the scan then it is very unlikely that you
can open it afterwards in Outlook. Using Outlook 2003 doesn't change this as
your pst-file would still be in the ANSI format and not the UNICODE format.

If all things fail, restore from a backup or use a 3rd party recovery tool
such as;
http://addins.howto-outlook.com/cimaware_outlookfix

Be warned; those tools don't come cheap.

 

[Ben]

Yes, try cropping even more; even more than half of it if you have to. Just
try to find that "sweet spot" for your pst-file.
If scanpst.exe fails to complete the scan then it is very unlikely that you
can open it afterwards in Outlook. Using Outlook 2003 doesn't change thisas
your pst-file would still be in the ANSI format and not the UNICODE format.

If all things fail, restore from a backup or use a 3rd party recovery tool
such as;http://addins.howto-outlook.com/cimaware_outlookfix

Be warned; those tools don't come cheap.














- Show quoted text -

Hi Robert,

Thanks for the reply.

I've managed to get the scanpst tool work repair the PST file
successfully, but cropping the file even more, I've now opened it in
outlook, however, although the contacts & sent items are their, the
inbox has been renamed 'Recovered Folder 8082' and I can't move any of
the email from that folder into a new PST file, I've tried
highlighting + drop & drop into a new PST, exporting to a new PST,
importing from the old PST into a new PST, all it does is errors about
some data being invalid.

I tried running outlook /resetfolder & /resetfoldernames but it
doesn't seem to make much difference. Any idea on how to fix this?
Should I run the scanpst tool again? Or will that not help?

Many thanks

Ben

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Yes, running scanpst.exe again might help with this. Run it until it doesn't
come up with errors anymore.
What's the error in full?

Sometimes starting from the beginning helps as well; chop of just a little
less or more and see if that affects results. It's a tedious process but if
the data is worth it...