Scanpst.exe Can't Repair PST File!

Scanpst.exe is an inbuilt utility of MS Outlook application which gets installed in the computer system along with the installation of MS Office suite. This utility is located in different locations in MS Office folder as per the versions of MS Office your install. This tool is small but very effective and efficient enough to deal with the minor corruption issues of MS Outlook's personal folder file i.e. PST file. But at times scanpst.exe can't repair PST file and leaves the PST issue unfixed. In such situations, using third party Outlook PST Repair software is the best way to resolve the issue and make the PST file work again.

To understand the situation let's consider a scenario where suppose a computer user is using Outlook 2003 in his PC and due to regular use its PST size has past the size-limit of 2GB which causes several problems. In order to resolve this problem when he tried to use Scanpst.exe he encountered an error which says -

"The file is too large & unable to repair the PST."

After this error message the PST file becomes inaccessible and he is unable to access any of the PST files.

Cause

The error is generally caused because Scanpst.exe is unable to operate on PST files whose size is greater than 2GB. Forcefully attempt of using Scanpst.exe on oversized PST can make all the data stored in it inaccessible.

Solution

In order to resolve this issue, you need to cut down your PST file size and then try to use Scanpst.exe. For that first try to delete unwanted and useless items in your PST and empty the Deleted Items folder. Use auto-compaction method to compress the size of the PST file and see if it helps in lowering the PST file size. You can also split the larger PST file into two or more PST files and can use them as well. But in case nothing works then go for third party Outlook PST Repair software and resolve in your issue in seconds.