When and How Should You Convert OST to PST?

If you work in a collaborative messaging environment of Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft Outlook, you must be knowing the importance of an OST (Offline Storage) file. Most of the users think that Outlook stores data only in PST (Personal Storage) files and OST file is not of much importance. However, all your data is stored in an OST file, when you are not connected with Exchange Server. For accessing data from OST file, Exchange server must Convert OST to PST.

The OST file contains all your Microsoft Outlook emails, notes, contacts, tasks, journals, and deleted items, when you are offline or not connected with Exchange Server. It enables you to access your data when you are offline. You can update your data by synchronizing with the Microsoft Exchange Server.

When you synchronize with Exchange Server, OST file is automatically converted into PST file. After connecting to the Exchange Server, you can download new emails and update your account. However, in some cases, the synchronization can not complete successfully and the conversion does not take place. In this case, you can not update the changes in PST file.

The synchronization process may fail due to any of the below reasons and the OST to PST conversion fails-

1)Your mailbox is corrupted, deleted or migrated from Microsoft Exchange Server.
2)OST file is corrupted.
3)MS Exchange database is damaged.
4)Exchange Server is crashed or malfunctioned.
5)Exchange profile is corrupted or modified.

If any of the above situations occurs, the conversion does not take place. Due to the same, you can not update your mailbox or even download newly received emails. At this point, your OST file become unusable and it becomes essential to manually Convert OST file to a usable PST file.

The only way to deal with this situation is to manually convert the unusable OST file to usable PST file. However, the question is how to convert the file? The solution is quite simple- use third-party OST to PST software.

The applications are particularly designed to convert your orphaned OST file to the PST file with all of its objects such as emails, notes, contacts, tasks, journals, and deleted items. The applications keep the original structure of the file intact, as they have read-only and non-destructive conduct.

Posted By Ost to Pst