Outlook developed a problem and I can't fix it

So I got up one morning and my laptop wouldn't wake up from sleep. The only things I had open when I went to bed were Outlook and Firefox.

I manually restarted with the power button and everything seemed fine. However, when I opened up Outlook I got the message"

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Cannot open your default email folders. Errors have been detected in the file C:\Users\....\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst. Quit Outlook and all mail-enabled applications, and then use the Inbox repair tool (Scanpst.exe) to diagnose and repair errors in the file. For more information about the Inbox repair tool, see Help.
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I used the tool but on the 6th out of 8 tasks, it gives me the error message"

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An error occurred which caused the scan to be stopped. No changes have been made to the scanned file.
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So yeah... now what? Any ideas? Unfortunately that has a lot of old email that I don't have anywhere else and I'd really really like to get it back.

 

system restore?

 

system restor cannot fix a broken pst.

By the dedscription you gave, and the info that you said you have a lot of old emails, I am going to guess that you have a VERY LARGE pst file--especially if you have opted not to archive old emails to a separate pst file.

Does that sound right?

If so, there is some good news and bad news. The good news is we will be able to get some of the email back...the bad news is that we will lose some.

Outlook is not intended to work with such large files and scanpst will not fix files over 2gb

you need to download the repair tool from here:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=296088

Follow the instructions, it will truncate some of the emails to get you under the 2gb limit, then run scanpst again...that should get you back to some semblance of functioning, but for the future, create separate data files (maybe by year?) and store the data that way,

 

Make sure to copy and save pst file. Maybe later you can get it all back.