Hi folks. Trying to help my Dad. His Outlook file seems corrupted. Something about permissions. Geek Squad didn't seem very interested in helping.

I think I need to recover the .pst file. Im a mac guy and know nothing about PC's.

I'm thinking about trying to migrate him to a Mac. But he's 77 and I think it might be too much for him. Then again, anything had to be better than his current PC. It's a Dell all in one and is less than two years old.

Any thoughts?

This has worked for me a couple of times: https://support.office.com/en-...12-86c4-60458afc5253

Michael

First of all: Friends don't let friends use Microsoft Outlook.

Seriously. That application is just a disaster waiting to happen. When I was in IT (professionally) I had two internal customers that insisted on using it. One was the owner of the company and the other was a VP who was the 2nd biggest share-holder. So I had no choice.

Guess which two users accounted for most of the IT Department's email issues?

But if you absolutely must: Try this: Repair Outlook Data Files (.pst and .ost)

Hope he has a lot of disk space (more than the size of the existing .pst file) and RAM. And time. It's slow.

Good luck.

Cool. Ill give it a try. The message BTW is:

"The item Referred by this shortcut can't be accessed. You may not have the appropriate permissions."

Maybe its a different problem.

Did I mention I know NOTHING about PC's?

Try running Outlook from the Start menu rather than the Desktop alias/shortcut.

quote:

Originally posted by architect:
Try running Outlook from the Start menu rather than the Desktop alias/shortcut.

My first thought too.

Error reads like the shortcut link broke. Or outlook has been deleted.

Sorry I can't help.
But we have Outlook for work and at home.
Nothing but issues. At least as bad as ITunes.

Oh Jeebus ensigmatic > you're retired so what do you know? Go back to your "Man Cave" and finish watching Matlock.

First, how do you know it is a corrupted PST?
Permissions?
Way too little data to determine a fix.

I have had my own Exchange Server since 1998.
I have been through multiple iterations of Outlook , some good and some (Office 2007) bad.
However, Outlook is a great application and when used with MS Server products aka Exchange or O365 it is great.
Used on other types it is not as effective.

But we can't fix the problem (if there is one) by simply bashing MS even though it feels good to some.

Throw some more data and perhaps we can fix it.
YMMV

I used to have to help the elderly founder of our company with Outlook on his home PC, and I went through all that crap with him. He was constantly fat-fingering stuff (actually, shaky-handing stuff) and I had to remote to his PC or drive to his house to set things right. I also went through corrupt pst files, too-large pst files, migration, Outlook version updates, etc.

If/when you resolve the problem, I'd seriously consider moving him to a browser-based email account, gmail in particular, if you are familiar with it.

IMO it's much more straightforward then Outlook, easier for you to assist him remotely, nothing to ever have to migrate if/when his PC dies, and much harder for him to "break."

Nothing wrong with Oulook, unless using a really old version. Before I retired I supported one of my clients that has hundreds of users on Outlook 2013 and few problems. Most businesses and even a lot of individuals are moving to hosted Exchange anyway and if there is a problem with the data file a new one can be created and email downloaded from server.

Don't go to Geek Squad for such a problem. They are basically sales people with low skills in IT area.

In my experience the error message does not indicate a problem with the Outlook data file and as mentioned a problem with the shortcut. Try entering outlook.exe in the run or start box. Hopefully he did not pick up some nasty malware.

In the mean time your Dad may be able to access his email, or at least some of it, by going to the web based email for the provider. From his email address you probably can find the provider and go from there or call/contact support from the provider or internet service provider if he is using their email. He will need his email address and password. Hope he knows his email password and yes he has one though he may not realize it.

Make sure to make a copy of the PST file first in a different directory. Pick one, and run the SCANPST program. If you're able to fix it, then open Outlook, create a NEW PST file, then COPY the data from the old to the new - DO NOT MOVE data as it can corrupt the file again.

This is very important especially for the earlier versions that had a smaller file size limitation.

Contact me via my email if you have questions.

quote:

Originally posted by Spokane228:
Cool. Ill give it a try. The message BTW is:

"The item Referred by this shortcut can't be accessed. You may not have the appropriate permissions."

Maybe its a different problem.

Yeah. Sounds like the thing to which the shortcut used to refer has either gone missing or something has restricted access to it.

Long time ago, outlook wasn't fond of .pst larger than x mb or something like that. Check what version you're running and what is the size of the file. Maybe there's the rub.


0-0

I somehow managed to convince my elderly mother to go away from Outlook to gmail, and she has for a couple of years embraced the cloud. It has really helped for her to have both smartphone and desktop gmail reading the same items. I can, if need be, remote in to her gmail to help. We also went to google drive so she has files in the cloud. Really helped when her hard drive failed, and I had to install a new one.

quote:

Originally posted by 0-0:
Long time ago, outlook wasn't fond of .pst larger than x mb or something like that.

I believe that was actually a 16- or 32-bit hardware/OS issue. Or maybe a FAT filesystem issue?

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:

quote:

Originally posted by 0-0:
Long time ago, outlook wasn't fond of .pst larger than x mb or something like that.

I believe that was actually a 16- or 32-bit hardware/OS issue. Or maybe a FAT filesystem issue?

I believe Outlook 2000 and earlier had a hard 2 GB limit on .pst file size. I ran into that a number of times.

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:

quote:

Originally posted by 0-0:
Long time ago, outlook wasn't fond of .pst larger than x mb or something like that.

I believe that was actually a 16- or 32-bit hardware/OS issue. Or maybe a FAT filesystem issue?

No that would be incorrect.
In Outlook 2002 and earlier, the .pst files are in the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) format, and the overall size has a limit of 2 gigabytes (GB).

And getting back to the original problem we don't really know what the problem is so prescribing a PST db repair is premature.