How to.. Repair Outlook 2010 Data Files

Outlook 2010 crashing, won't start, acting strangely? Let me show you how to repair the data files using a tool found in Microsoft Office 2010 itself.

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Closed Caption:

yeah
yeah
and welcome back to lee's stuff where I
talk about issues regarding your
computer problems you may be having
today we're going to talk about outlook
2010 data files and how to repair them
outlook 2010 still has a lot of bugs in
it and it's it crashes kind of regularly
and I get this complaint from clients a
lot
they want to know why and they want to
see what's going on but unfortunately
unless you kind of know how to navigate
through the tools
you're really not going to find any easy
way to repair it and you may even find
that the program will just simply not
run it'll hang it will crash you go to
run it again and it won't come up
and that's kind of a common occurrence
I've see that quite a bit now i'm
running windows 7 64 bit
although this is not unique to 64-bit
happens in 32 bit as well so I've got my
windows task manager open right now the
way you get to that by the way is right
click on the taskbar at the bottom of
your screen anywhere in a blank area and
click on start task manager and it will
pop this window up for you and you'll
notice there are three things three
items here in the screen the DW 20 x c
and you'll notice if you look all the
way over to the right you'll see it's
the microsoft application error
reporting what's happening here is that
something is crashed and it hasn't
properly closed down after the the crash
and so it's leaving this error reporting
program running and that's kind of a
clue that there's something happening
thats hanging quite a bit so i'm going
to go ahead and kill these just because
they were they really don't need to be
here right now and they will restart if
there is a crash
that's something normal too - windows
i'm going to close those out so they're
gone but the reason that I actually
brought you in here is to make sure that
if you have for example an issue where
you can't start outlook again you want
to and in a lot of times you're forced
to reboot to make that happen
one of the things you might want to do
is come in here and look under the
processes tab and you want to be in this
processes tab here and you also want to
be click on the image name so that
you're sorting from A to Z and you can
tell that because this little arrow here
is pointing upwards
if it's pointing downwards you're
sorting z -
hey if you you go upwards you're sorting
a tizzy
so once you're starting a to z you can
actually scroll down here and you want
to go to the O's and make sure that you
don't see outlook running here if you
see outlook . exe running here and it's
not in your taskbar and it's not showing
up anywhere else then obviously it
hasn't shut itself down properly and
sometimes you might even see more than
one
so what you're going to want to do is
kill that and you do it basically the
same way that i just did the other
program
now before you kill anything i should
always warn everybody every single time
you go to make a change to your system
where you do something like this run a
backup be safe
running back up and I i show you one of
my other videos and all through a little
annotation link down to it here to show
you how to actually run a really really
good image backup of your drive very
easily so do that first please just to
be safe
anyway with that said what you would do
if you saw the outlook . exe program
here you would right click on it i'm
just going to pick one of these programs
here it this is not the one you would be
shutting down obviously shutdown outlook
but this is what the the menu would look
like and you would click end process and
when you click end process then that
will kill the program in Italy actually
asked you if you wanted to kill it'll
ask if you want to end it here and you
to say in process
so once you've done that and you have no
outlook 32 elica exe programs running
here processes running here then you
know that you can go to the next step
because if you don't you will not be
able to get to the next step
so the next step is really to run a
program that has actually built into the
the installation of outlook and outlook
actually provides it as a tool but they
don't really document it too much it is
there but they don't really document it
very well and probably because they
don't want people to abuse it
but here it is it's this program here
called scan PST DXE and it
it just is in this
office directory and you can see there's
the the path to it right there in the
x86 you're saying is because i'm running
a 64-bit version of Windows but it's
installed as a 32-bit version of office
so it puts it in this x86 Program Files
directory so but yours if it's a 64-bit
version of outlook you will have it in
the program files directory by itself
at any rate you'll find it in here under
program files microsoft office office 14
that's where you're going to locate it
now i actually have this pinned to my
Start menu you can see right here it's
it spin so I'd have to unpin it
i use it because it does happen quite a
bit it's really an issue and and so I
keep it handy to be able to run it
so then what do you actually run it on
well outlook create several data files
and i've gone ahead and pulled up
another window here and this window is
is where we're going to find the files
for outlook their data files and you
have to be careful here
don't randomly delete things don't go in
and change things around this is
something that is managed by office and
so you don't want to mess with it too
much but in this case we're going to try
to locate the files that were going to
correct or we're going to repair and the
way you do that is you go into your C
Drive
scroll down to users because everything
stored under a user
you're going to go in this case to my my
i'm going to go to lead to my user that
i'm logged in as now but you'll notice
that the the directory that we need to
go into next which is app data is hidden
so if you want to actually see this
you're going to have to make a change to
the way that your folder view is listed
in the way you do that is you go to
tools folder options view
ok and you'll notice there's hidden
files and folders here as an option
you can either show them where you can
hide them now I've selected to show them
because i want to be able to get to some
of these files you may want to do that
temporarily and then come back and turn
this off or you can leave it open but
just be careful because hidden files are
usually hidden for a reason so big
careful about what you're doing here but
in this case in order to get to this app
data directory
you're going to have to show hidden
files and folders
otherwise you will not see that ok so go
ahead and cancel that close it
so we've gone to see users and then the
user name in this case leave for me
we're going to AppData local i'll scroll
down to microsoft microsoft and then
scroll down to outlook
there's outlook so now you can see
there's a lot of different files in here
and many of them have to do the
different email addresses the test email
addresses and stuff that I've got that I
i run and the one that is for the file
that i'm actually going to correct today
is an OST file which happens to be for
gmail account but there's also other
files in here for other email addresses
that i use is a test that i just kind of
run as a test and the reason it's
hopping around here is because it's
actually making changes to it as we
speak to the directory as we speak but
some of them are PSD files
others are OSD files and then you'll see
the NSD files the nst files are four
notes and so obviously there's a lot of
different options in here but what
you're going to do is look for the one
that actually works with your particular
account that you're trying to deal with
now there's a main one
a main outlook PST file which actually
you'll see that's pretty large that
actually holds a lot of information
about virtually all of the settings with
an outlook
so if that file in itself is corrupted
you'll see all kinds of weird things
happen as well but i'm going to correct
this OST file today
so that's the one I'm going to try to
open so let's go back here and let's run
a scan PST actually i think i have it
running you double click it and it would
come up and it says microsoft outlook
inbox repair tool
so what you need to do is remember which
file it is that you're looking for here
and where it's located
you can always click up here in this
this toolbar and it will show you the
actual path
you can even copy that paste if you want
to and you'll select browse here
bring this up so you can see it and it
just happens that it's going directly
there right now it's going to that
directory right now so i'm going to go
ahead and click on this file and say
open and it will take it a second
because it loads all the data from it
into its program there it is not popped
up and you'll say start now you'll watch
it will run through these different
phases sometimes it takes a while
sometimes it happens really quickly and
of course it pops up and says errors
were found in this file now you would
think it would tell you what errors
there are and maybe give you a clue
about what it is that's broken
if you click on details right well let's
click on details and says internal
errors were found it must be repaired
in other words it's not going to tell
you anything about it it does create a
log file which will tell you about it
there's the log file right there
but each time you run this get over
rights that log file so you never know
if especially if you have to run this
more than once which I'm going to do it
will overwrite that log file so if you
want to know what's in there
make sure you look at the log file right
after you've run the repair it also ask
you if you want to make a backup of the
scan file before repairing I always do
just because it's just you know practice
and if one already exists when you click
on repair a little pop a button say one
already exists you want to continue
anyway and I do so i'm going to go ahead
and let it do that and it just kind of
sits and spins here for a minute and
then it will come back up and tell you
that the repair is complete
so now you think everything is wonderful
and it's working fine and there aren't
any problems
now let's try that again shall we let's
go back in
let's grab the OST file one more time
you see that log was created will say
open it will think about it for a moment
and then it'll pop up in here showing
that it's there there it is
and then we'll click start again and
we'll let it run through its check and I
betcha it's going to come up and say
their errors still
yep it did so we're going to go ahead
and repair all more time and say yes go
ahead and
overwrite the old backup and it says
repair complete now just to be thorough
i'm going to run it one more time
because I know better
so i'm going to go ahead and load that
OST file back and again and i'm going to
select there goes
let's start running through we're
probably good now
NORs are found in the file so there you
go
so just so you know you probably are
going to have to run this this program
at least twice maybe three times and i'm
going to go ahead and run it actually on
the main outlook data file which is this
one here
the outlook PST file I'm going to run it
on that one just to be sure that we
don't have any errors in the main
outlook file itself want to make sure
that it's running well and let's see
what comes up with that yeah only minor
inconsistencies that's not unusual so
we'll go ahead and tell it to repair it
and yes the backup file already existed
so there it says it's complete
I'm going to run it one more time just
to be a hundred percent sure
and where's my PSD there it is
and we'll click on start once it loads
there we go and help now it says errors
were found so again this is why you have
to run this sometimes several times to
actually get it to work all the way
through and fix all of the issues in
your file so don't be afraid to run it
several times and make sure that you
come up with it too saying that there
were no errors found in the file and
that technically kind of faster checks
itself it the more likely it is there
aren't any here so there we go
no errors found in the file so now
theoretically we are good to go
so that's it in a nutshell i know this
is a long video but you really need to
know how to repair these files and to
keep them clean because once they get
thoroughly corrupted
there's kind of nothing you can do about
it you gotta start over so I always once
i start noticing that outlook is
crashing a lot or its being sluggish or
won't start right or something's
happening that rather than just rebooted
and start over
I go ahead and use the scan . PST
program just to make sure
so there's how you repair your outlook
data files sorry for taking so long but
I want to make sure I'm thorough you can
always get back and forth in this this
program or pause resume ahead so
hopefully this helped you out
and as usual if you have any questions
or any comments any suggestions for new
videos please post them on the channel
I be happy to see him take care enjoy