Remember that MS Outlook is one of the most prominent factors in the professional world. If you’re searching for the best email management system, you should not look beyond MS Outlook. MS Outlook is capable of dealing with contacts, calendar items, tasks, and notes, and manages hundreds or even thousands of emails daily. Just like the other email client market, the MS Outlook application stores all the data items in a specific file format. The format developed by the developers to store the data items is known as the PST format. One of the most common reasons why businesses and organizations prioritize MS Outlook over the other email client market is due to their data storage capacity. However, even though they might seem beneficial, you also need to know about the corruption of the PST files. The PST file corruption of the MS Outlook mailbox corruption is undoubtedly a troublesome situation. If you want to prevent Outlook mailbox corruption, make sure you read the article to the end.
PST File Size: The Primary Cause behind Corruption
PST and OST files are the two file formats that are being used by MS Outlook. These file formats are capable of storing the data items. If you use an older version of Outlook such as 2003, the ANSI PST file format comes with a size limitation of 2GB. However, if you’re using the upgrade version of MS Outlook such as 2007, the size of the ANSI PST file format would be 20GB. Meanwhile, in the latest versions of MS Outlook, the PST file size limit is 50GB.
But do you know why we talked about the size of the PST files in terms of corruption? This is because these size limitations are one of the primary causes of PST file corruption. When the size of the PST file reaches its maximum limit, it will undoubtedly suffer from severe corruption depending on the situation. But remember that there are other causes of PST file corruption apart from the oversizing issue. Power failure, virus attacks, and abrupt shutdown of the system or application can also cause the corruption of PST files.
How Can You Prevent MS Outlook Corruption?
As an MS Outlook user, you might face corruption. Even though you can fix PST files that are corrupted with the help of a professional PST recovery tool, it’s still best if you take necessary precautions that will help you prevent PST file corruption easily.
Make Sure the PST Files Don’t Cross the Size Limit
As mentioned earlier, oversizing is one of the most common causes of PST file corruption. Therefore, it’s best to maintain the PST files within their limitations. When the size of the Outlook PST files becomes too large, all the operations of MS Outlook will be affected and slowed down. This is why you always need to ensure the size of the PST files is within the limitation. The ANSI PST file limitation of MS Outlook 2002 and earlier is 2GB and corruption of PST files is more visible in these versions. However, if you’re using the latest version, the oversizing might not be the cause of the PST file corruption.
Don’t Store the PST Files over Network Systems
Due to the expanding size of the PST files, many users think that they should save their PST files over server-based systems. This is one of the most crucial mistakes you need to avoid if you don’t want to lose your valuable data items by corrupting the PST files. Saving the PST files over the network system will not only make the PST files vulnerable to corruption but the MS Outlook application can also be slowed down due to the fluctuating speed of the internet. Not to mention, when you rely on the network-based systems to save the PST files, multiple users might start accessing the same PST file at the same time, which will cause corruption. This is why you should always save or store the PST files on your SSD or HDD. As per Geeksfor Geeks, HDDs are more cost-effective than SSDs.
Close the System and Outlook Properly
When you shut down the MS Outlook application improperly, the PST files will be corrupted. In fact, this is one of the most common reasons behind the corruption of the PST files. When users are working with PST files that are of massive size and the power gets shut down, the PST files will suffer from severe corruption. Sometimes, the PST files become so corrupted that you cannot repair them without a professional PST recovery tool. When the PST files that you are working with shut down abruptly, they will be corrupted and you might lose all the essential data items permanently. This is why it’s extremely essential to consider power backups such as UPS that will help your computer run even after power disconnection.
Conclusion
These are some ways to prevent Outlook mailbox corruption. If you have any other thoughts, make sure you let us know by commenting down below.