PST file

[aaronduncan]

Hello,


I use a single PST file as my main information store between home and office. The file is 100MB and has recently been compacted. At the office, we have an Exchange Server, and at home I interface with my POP. Ultimately everything gets filed in this PST file which I carry on removable media in order to update whichever machine I am working on. I have recently started running the PST repair utility on this file every couple of days and it almost always detects errors. Below, I have included the output from one I ran just this afternoon. The 2-part question I have is:


1. What causes this corruption in the first place? (I have read a bit off the web and it seems that this is an accepted truth about PST files, however it seems unacceptable to me!)


2. Given the output below, the utility tells me it is "attempting" to do a lot of stuff. Are there any unrecoverable errors in this list? The output wasn't specific enough to reassure me that it fixed everything and that it encountered no un-recoverable errors. The final pop-up confirmation box does actually say that the file was repaired.


Thanks.

 

[voyagerfan99]

Stop running the repair utility unless you have issues with the PST file.

 

[Geoff]

Why do you copy the PST file between locations? At work it is in sync with your exchange server. At home use POP to read and send emails, but either wait until you get to work to move them into folders, or simply setup your home to use Exchange as well. What you're doing will sooner rather than later lead to a corrupt Outlook database file.

 

[voyagerfan99]

Why do you copy the PST file between locations? At work it is in sync with your exchange server. At home use POP to read and send emails, but either wait until you get to work to move them into folders, or simply setup your home to use Exchange as well. What you're doing will sooner rather than later lead to a corrupt Outlook database file.

He's using it as a database file, which is perfectly fine. You can add and remove it from Outlook.

I just don't see why he feels the need to run the repair utility all the time when he's not having an issue.

 

[beers]

Same with Geoff, that sounds like a lot of extra work when you could just have it 'work' out of the box by syncing data with the Exchange server.

If you're yanking the USB out without 'safely removing' it or while the file is open (ie, Outlook is still running) then it could be causing file corruption.

At the office, we have an Exchange Server, and at home I interface with my POP

Is there some reason you can't utilize MAPI or even IMAP? POP has some annoying limitations.

 

[Geoff]

He's using it as a database file, which is perfectly fine. You can add and remove it from Outlook.

I just don't see why he feels the need to run the repair utility all the time when he's not having an issue.

I understand it's possible, but maybe I'm missing something, because it seems tedious to copy the Outlook database over between machines every day. I don't see why he doesn't setup Outlook at home to connect via Exchange/IMAP.