Microsoft Outlook stores data items such as emails, notes, contacts, calendars, journals and many more in Personal Storage Tables, also called PST files. Most Outlook users are aware of corruption issues with PST files and believe that occasional software or hardware problems cause damage to the PST files. However, these problems are not occasional and can happen more frequently than customers imagine. Secondly, even simple mistakes can cause serious corruption in PST files ' corruption that cannot be treated easily by in-built tools. In such situations, it may become necessary to use third-party tools to recover Outlook and save vital data.
Many Outlook users are skeptical when they are first informed that PST file corruption can happen as a result of a simple mistake. For example, an abnormal termination of the Outlook program can easily result in corruption of the PST file. If you have tried to kill the Outlook.exe process using the Task Manager, tried to hard boot your system or if Windows crashed as you were still using Microsoft Outlook, there is every possibility that the PST file may have become corrupted. Fortunately, though, Outlook provides a tool to check the integrity of the PST file the next time you use Outlook. On the other hand, if the file is seriously damaged, you may not be able to access the file at all and may need to recover Outlook using other tools.
Microsoft realizes the potential damage that such situations could cause to the PST file and with each version, Outlook is proving to be more resilient to improper shutdowns. There is also more intuitiveness when it comes to checking the integrity of the PST file even if there is the occasional improper shutdown. Also, the check happens in the background so that you can know what the status is at all times. The problem comes about when even the integrity check fails to rectify the errors and the PST file proves completely inaccessible. One can of course, use advanced restoration tools to recover Outlook but we should also understand what steps we can take to avoid making simple mistakes that could damage PST files.
It is very important that users close all applications in the proper way before they actually shut down the system. You should give sufficient time for all processes to be shut down completely before attempting to shut down the computer. Some times, unknown to the user who has just shut down the Outlook application and wants to shut down the computer, there are processes still running and which are taking time to exit naturally. If the computer is forcibly shut down while these processes are still running, they may end up causing damage to the system or to some files. You should therefore wait till all applications have been closed down properly before closing down your computer.