OST files can often become corrupt or inaccessible. In order to get your data from them, you may need an OST recovery software. But most of the times, it’s not the data that’s damaged, but the file’s relation with the Outlook client itself.
Let’s see why and how that happens.
OST Recovery
Offline Storage Table (OST)
OST is short for Offline Storage Table, allowing you to access your emails in an offline mode. When you add a new IMAP email account to Outlook, the client will download your data from the servers into an OST file. So, in a sense, OST is an internal and a functional file for Outlook. As it opposed to personal file open for manual data operations.
Whenever there are events like power failure, hard disk failure, network failure, malware attack or other similar events, the OST file can be stuck. It will not sync the data anymore with the email account through servers and the link is broken. Though, this sort of problem can be easily solved by deleting the OST file itself. In that case, when you launch Outlook again, it will start downloading data again into a new OST file. What you lose by this is all the data that hasn’t been synced already into the servers, which may or may not be significant. And it also requires time to download the data again.
In other cases, usually when a user is switching or leaving a company, the main email account is deleted instead of OST file. User will keep the OST file as a backup to take it away for future reasons, not knowing that without the email account, the file won’t be of any use. That’s when you get your data stuck inside OST file.
There can be a lot more reasons for getting a stuck data inside OST file.
This is when a user realizes that OST cannot be imported into Outlook. It’s not a personal data file.
Personal Storage Table (PST)
PST, on the other hand, is! It’s short for “Personal Storage Table’ and can be used for variety of purposes like import, export, and backup. You can also set to download your data from email servers into PST instead of OST, given you don’t need the real time data syncing across local folders and the email servers. PST also has an advantage of storing contacts and calendar data, unlike OST that is only used for emails.
Considering all that, it becomes obvious that one can use a third-party OST Recovery software to get the data from OST by converting it into PST files. Which is to say that an OST recovery software is specifically an OST to PST conversion software.
Note that there are other categories of OST recovery software tools as well. But that sort of recovery is entirely different than getting data back from stuck OST files. In case of actual data recovery, it’s not a functional issue with OST but the data inside the files have been damaged and broken.
But if that’s not the case with you, you can simply convert OST to PST.
OST Recovery Software
One such OST Recovery software, or the OST to PST conversion tool, is “OST Extractor Pro” from USL Software. It has several benefits over other similar solutions out there. Namely, it has the simplest UI without cutting down the features. It also allows for batch conversion of the multiple OST files. And it has an option to split PST files into smaller ones by setting your desired file size limit, and so on.
Note that “OST Extractor Pro” can also convert OST to other formats including Mac based email clients like Apple Mail, Thunderbird, Entourage, MBOX, and EML files.
Try OST Recovery Software
Get a free version to check out here. It will convert ten items from all the folders inside the files you want to convert. It has no locked down features, giving you full access to its functionality.
The 24 x 7 tech support also adds another layer of usability and efficiency that isn’t available with other solutions. Get in touch with the team to ask them anything you have doubts about or get their help in case you are stucking OST to PST conversion.
If you are looking for OST recovery software, then try “OST Extractor Pro‘ today for recovering all data.