What is OST File?

The term OST is an abbreviation of Offline Storage file. It is an offline folder created by Microsoft Outlook email applications to hold copies of emails from the Exchange server. Users can work on the mail server, store the file, and when internet connectivity is available, the file immediately gets synced with the server files. Users will be able to access data items in Cache Exchange Mode and hence, operate emails even in absence of the server.

Why Outlook OST File is Important?

Even in unreliable network connectivity, a user can work with their data without any trouble. It contains the copies of items, which are saved on the mail server. The extendible storage capacity of up to 50 gigabyte allows a person to store galore amount of data within it. Moreover, it helps in recovery from lost mailboxes in case of any damage to mail Exchange server.

What is the Location of OST File?

The OST files are saved at different location, depending upon the version of Windows OS:

Windows XP: drive:\Users\My Documents\Outlook Files

Windows 7 and Vista: drive:\Users\Documents\Outlook Files

Windows 8: drive:\Users\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook

Windows 8.1: drive:\Users\admin\Documents\Outlook Files

Windows 10: drive:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook

Limitations of OST File

Despite its storage abundance, the file type has some flaws:

1. It is useless in the case of email profile lock-out / damage.
2. The files with large numbers of data affect the performance of the Outlook.
3. Process of re-creating a damaged file is time taking.

Why Do OST Files Get Corrupted?

When OST files get corrupt, they are either deleted or become unreadable. These files might be broken / damaged due to the following causes:

a) Hardware Reasons

• Storage device might encounter bugs.
• Hard drive might have bad sectors.
• Issues with network connectors during sync.
• Power loss during sync.

b) Software Reasons

• Abnormal termination of MS Outlook while logging out
• When storage is about to reach its limit, files tend to get corrupted
• Virus or other malicious malware
• Deficiency in Microsoft Outlook itself

Procedures to Repair Damaged Outlook OST File

Even though the OST files get damaged or corrupted at times due to some unforeseen reasons but still they can be restored to their previous state. Various tools and procedures are available to recover the damaged OST files, which includes the procedures to recreate a similar copy of previous form or to fix the broken OST file.

a) Manual Procedure to Repair OST File

You can use SCANOST.EXE tool to repair corrupted OST file. But, this free utility is available only in Microsoft Outlook 2007 and its earlier versions. If you are working on MS Outlook 2010, 2013 and 2016, then first you have to convert OST file into PST format. After that, run SCANPST.EXE tool to repair converted PST file. Besides, you can directly repair corrupted OST file with the help of automated solution. Let’s see the solution in the next paragraph.

b) Automated Solution to Repair Corrupted OST File

The best way to repair damaged OST files is to use OST repair tool to fix the broken OST file, automatically. There are many eminent feature provided within this utility and few of them are mentioned-below:

1. Extract and recover deleted messages from OST file.
2. No limitation on the size of OST files to be restored.
3. Repaired damaged OST file can be restored in 3 formats.
4. Email Meta-data like read / unread status is maintained.

Conclusion

It would be safe to say that MS Outlook and its OST feature is a crucial material, which caters emailing over wide range of business or an individual. It helps in both internal as well as external communication and keeps mailboxes up to date. However, OST corruption and recovery is a delicate matter that must be dealt immediately to avoid further damage of the online storage. It is a recommendation that one should consult for professional tool to repair damaged OST files because these are safe and secure techniques to deal with this problem.

If you are the frequent user of Microsoft Outlook, then no doubt you will be familiar with OST and PST files. The entire data of Outlook including emails, contact, calendars etc. stored within these files. But, sometimes these files get corrupted due to many reasons like virus, malware etc. If we precisely talk about the corruption in PST files, then there are inbuilt solution like scanpst.exe or Inbox Repair tool available with MS Outlook to repair damaged PST files. In case, if scanpst.exe tool does not work properly then you can try SCANPST.EXE alternate solution. In the following segment, we will discuss the best alternative of scanpst.exe or Inbox Repair tool.

Best Alternative of Inbox Repair Tool

There are various situations where scanpst.exe or Inbox Repair tool fails to repair corrupted PST files. The tool also takes a long time and more efforts to perform the repair process. However, it is only efficient for minor corruption. In a simple way, you can say that the success of scanpst.exe is a completely depends upon the amount of corruption present in the PST file. In case, if a user faces severe problem then, users prefer an alternative of scanpst.exe tool like Outlook Recovery Tool. It is the best solution to recover the inaccessible and damaged Outlook PST files with their attributes. By using this alternative, a user can repair and restore a block of corrupted files within few minutes. Also, this application supports the latest versions of Outlook such as 2016, 2013, 2010, 2007, and all below versions. How to Repair PST File Using SCANPST.EXE Alternate?

1. First of all, click on the Start menu and go to the All Programs >> SysTools Outlook Recovery.

2. After launching the tool, click on the Add File button.

3. Then, an Add File window pops up. Here you will see two options Select File and Search File. Now, click on the Select File radio button then click on the “...” button to browse the PST file.

4. After that, search the desired PST file & click on the Open button.

5. If you have selected Search File option then you will see two more options Search All Drive and Search Selected Drive for searching the PST files.

6. After completion of the searching process, the tool displays the entire list of PST files.

7. You can also see the storage path of PST file. Then, select either Quick scan or Advance scan mode and click on the Add button to proceed further.

8. Now, the Outlook Recovery software will start the scanning process.

9. Further, a dialog box appears which confirm the success of scanning process. Click on Yes button if you want to save the scan results for the .pst file.

10. In this step, you can preview all the added mails on the software interface.

11. Next, you can see all the folders & mailbox items. Click on the Mail tab to view only emails.

12. Click on Calendars tab to view events from all mailbox items.

13. Click on Contacts tab to view the address book information in the software.

14. Now, click on the Export button to migrate mailboxes.

15. If you have selected PST radio button then click on the Advanced setting option.

16. Now, choose Split PST option, Date Filter, and Categories according to your requirement and click on Save button.

17. Then, choose the final destination to save the exported files and click on Export button.

18. Now, the software will start the export process. After completion of process click on OK button.

19. Further, click on the Save button to save the report in the CSV file format.

20. At last, you can view the final PST files in the specific final location.

Summing Up

Scanpst.exe is an inbuilt utility which is provided by Microsoft and the main motive of this tool is to repair the corrupted Outlook files. But, it is only efficient for minor corruption. In this circumstances, users are looking for an alternative of scanpst.exe or Inbox Repair tool. So, we have discussed the best alternative of scanpst.exe or Inbox Repair tool in this blog and noticed that Outlook Recovery tool is the perfect solution to repair all type of corruption. It is very easy to use and recommended by many data recovery experts.

An eDiscovery tool is used to export Office 365 mailboxes to the Outlook PST file in the Exchange Admin Center (EAC). The search results consist all the components from the Office 365 mailboxes. It completely depends on the sources of the content from the eDiscovery search. These Office 365 mailbox items can be sent to other people also within the same organization. But, sometimes a user faces an error eDiscovery PST export tool stuck calculating while running migration of PST file in Office 365. eDiscovery PST export tool failed to retrieve search configuration. Hence, in this write up, we will tell you the method to resolve the issue when eDiscovery PST export tool sticks in calculating state.

What Are The Symptoms Of This Problem?

There are some situations given where the eDiscovery PST export tool sticks in calculating state:

• When a user is running Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 in an Office 365 Dedicated/ITAR environment.
• If a person is the member of the SSA-Discovery Management baseline role group or of a custom role group that uses the SSA_Mailbox Search management role.
• When a user is trying to perform a PST migration by using the eDiscovery PST Export Tool.

When you enter your credentials and you get a scenario like this, then surely the tool is stuck in a calculating state.

What Are The Main Causes Of This Problem?

There are many reasons behind the eDiscovery PST export tool sticks in calculating state error message. If the below mentioned following conditions are true, then it may the tool is stuck in a calculating state.

• When the External Exchange Web Service (EWS) access is disabled in the environment.
• If a user tries to start the PST migration process over the Internet.

How to Resolve eDiscovery PST Export Tool Issue?

To resolve the error eDiscovery PST export tool stuck calculating issue, it is the best to use Office 365 Export PST tool or Office 365 Exporter. This software allows users to easily migrate selective or entire data from Office 365 mailbox to Outlook PST without any data loss. By using this tool, a user never sticks to a calculating state. Moreover, this utility also provides many facilities like multiple naming convention options, move multiple Office 365 accounts to PST at once, apply date filter, etc. It also compatible to work with all versions of Microsoft Windows.

Are you willing to know how to use Office 365 eDiscovery? eDiscovery or Electronic Discovery is a platform that is used to locate, collect, and produce “Electronically Stored Information” (ESI) for legal purposes. Items like emails, voicemails, databases, documents, presentations, audio/video files, social media, and websites are considered as ESI. However, in-place eDiscovery of Office 365 can also be used for identifying, searching and exporting O365 mailboxes. In order to use Office 365 eDiscovery, users need to be aware of the complete procedure. Here we will learn the method to run Office 365 eDiscovery with step-by-step description.

How to Use Office 365 eDiscovery

In-Place eDiscovery is situated in Exchange admin center of Office 365. Follow these steps to use eDiscovery in O365.

1. Assigning Users Permissions for Security & Compliance for eDiscovery

Users have to be assigned to the roles in Security & Compliance Center in order to perform any eDiscovery tasks. There are two role groups in eDiscovery, called ‘Reviewer’ and ‘eDiscovery Manager.’

• Reviewer: In this restrictive role group, members are only permitted to open and view eDiscovery cases of Security & Compliance Center. They are not permitted to perform any other task like creating searches or adding members. However, the members do have access to Advanced eDiscovery cases for performing analysis tasks.
• eDiscovery Manager: This role group allows its members to create and edit searches, add and remove people to a case, export content search results, etc. It also lets users create search results in Advanced eDiscovery for analysis.

Allow Permissions to Access Permissions Menu of Security & Compliance Center

• First of all, select the permission of your choice and click Edit icon to modify the option. On the next page, click on + icon to add users to ‘Administrator role’ and ‘eDiscovery Manager.’

• Repeat this process to add Reviewers, but select to edit ‘Review role group.’ Now the permissions are set and assigned users can execute different eDiscovery Center tasks.

2. Creating an eDiscovery Case

• Users have to access Security & Compliance Center to create a new case in eDiscovery. Then click on Search & investigation>> eDiscovery, and then click on + Create a case button.

• In the right panel, boxes will appear where you have to enter case name and description of the case. Click Save.

• A new case has been created. It will be displayed on the main page of eDiscovery.

3. Adding Members to the eDiscovery Case

On next step, members have to added to the case. Only members of role groups ‘Reviewer’ or ‘eDiscovery Manager’ can be added as the case members.

• Go to Security & Compliance Center. Click on Search & investigation >> eDiscovery. All cases of your organization will be displayed.
• Click on the case name where you want to add members. ‘Manage this case’ page will appear. Click on + Add button to add members.

• Select users from eDiscovery Managers list and click on Add button.

• After successful addition, confirmation notice will appear on screen.

4. Placing Legal Hold on Existing Content

Using eDiscovery case, users can place hold on certain contents to preserve it. Users can put hold upon mailboxes, group mailboxes, OneDrive for Business sites, SharePoint sites and sites associated with Microsoft. Once hold is placed on content location, that content will remain there until you remove the hold or delete the hold from that location. There are options for placing hold that determines the scope of hold:

• You can place either infinite hold or query-based hold. The infinite hold is placed on all contents while query-based hold is placed only on contents that match a particular search query.
• Hold can be placed within a specific date range when the contents were created, sent, or received. Otherwise, you can place hold on all contents.

Adding Hold on Contents

• Navigate to Security & Compliance Center and click on Search & investigation >> eDiscovery to get the list of cases. Click Open button beside the case that you want to place hold upon. Click Hold tab from Menu of the case homepage.
• Click on + icon to create a new Hold page.

• Give a name for the hold that is unique to your organization.
• Now, choose the location where the hold will be placed. The location can be a mailbox, sites, and even public folders. To add SharePoint, click on + button, then enter the URL you want to place hold on and finally click Add.

• Click Next after addition is done.
• If you want to create a query-based hold, enter values that you want to search in the box. Or else, leave it blank to put hold on all contents.

• Extra conditions can be added to narrow down the results.

• After configuring, click Finish to generate the query-based hold. It takes some time for this process to get completed.
• You can see the detailed information of the new hold created in the right pane of the Hold page of that particular hold. These information will give you complete idea about how much eDiscovery case content is put on hold.
• Users can also click on Update statistics to learn the latest hold statistics. They can also click Refresh to update these statistics in the detailed pane.

5. Creating and Running Content Search

After performing these steps, users can create and run searches for contents related to the case. Case Content Searches can be accessed only by users who are members of both the eDiscovery Manager role group and the case.

• Go to Security & Compliance Center, click Search & investigation >> eDiscovery. Find out in which case you want to create a Content Search and click Open. Wait till the case loads and select Search.

• Click + button to load a search window. Enter a name for the search.

• Choose from these options to select your search location. You can choose the first option if you want to search contents put on hold. To search other places like mailboxes, choose Search everywhere or Custom location selection options.

• If you select Search everywhere option, also select all options that will appear under it.
• If you select Custom location selection option, choose your preferred location from the list of options.
• After location selection is done, click Next. Enter conditions and keywords to generate a search query. Users can use Sensitive Type syntax here.

• Users can also add similar conditions that were used while putting hold on content. Save the search to make it run.
• Once the search is done, its results can be exported. Mailbox items get downloaded in PST format or as individual messages. SharePoint and OneDrive for business contents get exported as native Office documents and also other documents.

Conclusion

We have learned how to use Office 365 eDiscovery from this post. These are the basic steps to perform some elementary tasks using eDiscovery in Office 365. Apart from these, there are many other tasks that can be performed using this platform. However, users need to have in-depth knowledge to perform advanced level eDiscovery tasks. eDiscovery helps to protect documents that are important for litigation from being edited or deleted. The usage of Office 365 eDiscovery in the court of law will prove to be more beneficial in coming days.