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Overcoming the Limitations of the Outlook OST Integrity Check Tool

The strength of the offline folders file or OST files is that even if you make changes to the local copy of the data, when you log on to the Exchange server the next time around, Outlook will carry out a simple synchronization process that will ensure that data in both copies is up-to-date. However, at times, during synchronization, you may get error messages indicating that the OST file may have suffered some damage. Further, you might find that some items such as email messages, contacts, journal entries, appointments, notes, documents or posted items are missing from the OST file stored on your local computer or from the mailbox on the server, after synchronization is supposed to have taken place. When these problems arise, you can use the OST Integrity Check Tool to check the OST file and recover exchange data from it.

The OST Integrity Check Tool (Scanost.exe) can be used only with OST files. However, it is a very powerful tool that can be used not only to diagnose problems in the OST file but also to fix synchronization issues. The tool typically scans the OST file stored on the local machine as well as the mailbox stored on the Microsoft Exchange server. It diligently compares folders and items stored in each folder across the two locations, identifying where the differences lie and attempting to reconcile the differences. It is also extremely reliable since it does not change anything in the mailbox stored on the Exchange server. From the scan log, you can see what differences were identified by the tool and what it could resolve. Problems it was not able to fix will also be mentioned in the scan log - you may have to try and manually recover exchange data that the tool could not retrieve. Typically, the scan log is to be found in the Deleted Items folder.

As you can see, the OST Integrity Check Tool (Scanost.exe) is very effective in finding inconsistencies as well as fixing errors in the OST files. However, the main limitation with this tool is that it works only so long as the errors are minor in nature. If you are dealing with serious synchronization issues or major errors in the OST file, you may need a more sophisticated tool such as Advanced Exchange Recovery from DataNumen. This software can very easily fix minor errors in the OST file but is also effective in dealing with problems that are more severe in nature.

In order to run the OST Integrity Check Tool, you have to be logged on to the Exchange server and the mailbox should be available. If there is no network connection or if the server is down, you will not be able to run this tool. Further, you can use this tool to only resolve synchronization issues in OST files. Fortunately, Advanced Exchange Recovery does not suffer from any of these limitations, can easily recover exchange data and with its ability to fix many other OST problems, is an attractive alternative to the OST Integrity Check Tool.