How to fix a damaged Outlook profile

[Astrobserver99 (Rob)]

My Outlook mail keeps crashing upon opening. I get a "cannot open outlook window" message. Any way to fix this problem? My method was to create a new user profile and import my original folders. Ideally, I would like to keep the original user profile.

[dpastern (Dave Pastern)]

Sometimes profiles corrupt. You can try and use scanpst.exe to repair the affected pst file, it might work, it might not. Instructions are aplenty on the web, but this page looks alright:

http://www.emailaddressmanager.com/outlook/repair.html

What version of Outlook are you using? Outlook 2002 and earlier had limitations on PST sizes - 1.7gb. If your PST file grew larger than that, it'd usually crash. Microsoft would not guarantee that scanpst.exe would fix it. Outlook 2003 technically removes the 1.7GB limit, but it can still do some odd funky things from time to time. PST files created with Outlook 2007 have no limits, and are the most robust imho.

Dave

[Visionoz (Bill)]

Yep,

Create a new profile unfortunately and then import the "old" PST file using the native Outlook2003 format (assuming here that's what you are using) and ensure that you do NOT import it as a "Outlook2002 or older" format which has a 2GB limit and as mentioned by someone else before, will start mucking you around from 1.5GB upwards! Since Outlook2003 onwards MS is using the unicode format for the PST file and it normally is good up to around max of 12GB IMHO. The Enterprise version of Outlook however has no limit so to speak (read into it whatever you want but methinks that crippleware by MS for the other versions to get more money is disgraceful!)

If using versions older than Outlook2003 then forget about using your Outlook as a storage system, if it's important enough best print it out! - Ouch for the trees though!

Even after deleting mails/attachments from Outlook (any version) you must run the "compact" process otherwise the file size will remain the same bloated size that it originally was

Cheers
Bill