Dealing with a “File is Corrupt … cannot open” error message in Outlook

As an Outlook user you are likely to be

suitably impressed by its collection of well thought out features. In fact the Ms Outlook application is miles ahead of its peers and its latest iteration is in a class of its own. However for all the laurels that Outlook has managed to garner over the years, it has failed to improve its overall robustness and it still remains prone to myriad errors. One day out of the blue while opening an email you may encounter a message that says the underlying file is corrupt and Outlook is unable to open it. In such a scenario, you need to follow a step by step guide to resolve the issue.

Restarting the Outlook client and resetting the Navigation pane

At the very basic you should consider restarting the system with a hard boot. Once your system goes live, you can try to start the Outlook email client. You can also consider resetting the Navigation pane in Ms Outlook for quick recovery.

Using the Detect and Repair Option

If the first step fails to work, you can consider using the Detect and Repair option in Ms Outlook to resolve the issue. The application would automatically diagnose the issue and rectify the problem. To access the feature just hit the Help Tab in Outlook and then move down to Detect and Repair choice.

Creating a New User Profile

Sometimes your existing profile in Outlook may get corrupted due to a logical error. In such a circumstance you should delete the existing profile and then create a new one. Once the new profile is in place, you can setup your email ID in it.

Backing up your data and reinstalling the Outlook application

Next you can also consider backing up the data and reinstalling the Outlook application. Ideally backups should be kept on a different location as a matter of abundant caution. Moreover backups should follow a regular schedule and once the application has been reinstalled, the old data can be imported.

Remain Prepared for the Worst Case Scenario

For all its goodness, Outlook remains vulnerable to crashes and PST corruption and during such incidents you may end up loosing all your data. Thus you should always remain prepared for the worst case scenario and keep an outlook repair tool like DataNumen Outlook Repair handy. It essentially is tailored to give you the perfect results irrespective of the media type of the source PST files and their size. The application is effective against password protected files and can even drag out data from encrypted PST files. Moreover the application supports batch processing and is uniquely capable of dealing with a Norton Ghost image. It incidentally works with all Outlook editions available today including the 2013 iteration. Last but not the least the application can help you search out the missing PST files during an Outlook crash.

Author Introduction:

Alan Chen is President & Chairman of DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including sql recovery and outlook repair software products. For more information visit http://www.datanumen.com/