Many users of Microsoft Outlook have been able to avoid loss of valuable Outlook data because of the powerful Inbox Repair Tool that Outlook provides. Using this tool, you can recover folders and all the items stored in the folders from corrupted PST files. However, to minimize data loss, it is important that you know exactly how the Inbox Repair Tool works, what items it restores and where restored items are placed. In fact, even before you run the Inbox Repair Tool, it is essential that you take a proper backup of your folders (PST files) as the tool will use this backup and the items that it is able to restore to complete a PST recovery.

Let us now look at the entire process step-by-step so that we can effectively recover Outlook data items from the damaged PST file. As we have mentioned above, the first step you need to take before running the Inbox Repair Tool is to take a backup of your present PST file. In fact, when you run the Inbox Repair Tool, you will be asked if you would like to create a backup of the original Personal Folders (PST file). Even if you have been taking regular backups, it is possible that you may not have taken backups since the most recent items have been downloaded or saved. It is therefore highly advisable that you select this option before attempting a PST recovery. If you have selected this option and then run the Inbox Repair Tool, a file called file-name.bak will now be created on your hard disk. This is merely a copy of your original PST file but with a different extension and will typically reside in the same directory as your original PST file. This makes it easier for you to locate the file at the time of recovery of data.

You can now run the Inbox Repair Tool, which will attempt to restore as many items from the original PST file as possible. All these items will be stored in a folder called 'Lost and Found'. At the same time, the tool will restore other folders like Calendar, Inbox, Journal, Contacts and so on but since this is a rebuilt PST file, they are usually empty. Our next job is therefore to move restored items to the respective folders and see if any more items can be recovered from the backup file that we had made before running the Inbox Repair Tool and trying the PST recovery.