As a business owner or employee, you must be aware of the important role Microsoft Exchange Server plays in facilitating communication and collaboration between employees and with customers. It is one of the most vital components in an environment that demands instant communication. However, one of the concerns of having an email account on a Microsoft Exchange Server is that you have to be connected to the server if you wish to send, receive or access the mails for any purpose. You can imagine the situations this can create if you are traveling, are working from home or have network problems. Fortunately, Outlook makes it possible to access the contents of the folder offline and you can then update the online folder through a simple synchronization process. The contents are stored offline in Offline Folder files or OST files and as we shall see, these help us immensely during ost recovery.
If you have an email account on an Exchange server, you can create an individual user profile that will be associated with the mailbox. If you would like to have the ability to work on the contents offline, you could enable the Offline Folders file feature by which the data will also be stored locally in offline folder files or OST files. When the connection to the server is not available or you do not want to connect to the server, you could continue working on the locally available copy of the Exchange server contents. The next time you connect to the server or can establish a connection, Outlook will automatically reflect all the changes you have made locally in the remote folder.
Another advantage of having a local copy of the contents in the form of OST files is that you can easily export the OST data in to Personal Folder files or PST files. These files can be accessed by Outlook and backups conveniently taken. In case of any corruption in the Exchange database, we can use these files to carry out an ost recovery.
If you find that the mailbox on the Exchange server has become unstable or corrupted to some reason, you might want to use the contents stored in the local OST files to recover data. The most important step in this recovery process concerns what you should not do! Do not delete the mailbox that is associated with the OST files before you have finished exporting all the data into the PST file. If you delete the mailbox before exporting, the server is not able to confirm that the OST files trying to access the mailbox are the ones associated with that particular profile. This may end up making the OST file completely inaccessible. Of course, you could use powerful recovery tools such as Advanced Exchange Recovery from DataNumen to carry out ost recovery and minimize the data loss.
However, the best way to recover all the data from OST files would be to first finish exporting them into PST files, create a new user profile and mailbox and then import all the data into the mailbox.
If you have an email account on an Exchange server, you can create an individual user profile that will be associated with the mailbox. If you would like to have the ability to work on the contents offline, you could enable the Offline Folders file feature by which the data will also be stored locally in offline folder files or OST files. When the connection to the server is not available or you do not want to connect to the server, you could continue working on the locally available copy of the Exchange server contents. The next time you connect to the server or can establish a connection, Outlook will automatically reflect all the changes you have made locally in the remote folder.
Another advantage of having a local copy of the contents in the form of OST files is that you can easily export the OST data in to Personal Folder files or PST files. These files can be accessed by Outlook and backups conveniently taken. In case of any corruption in the Exchange database, we can use these files to carry out an ost recovery.
If you find that the mailbox on the Exchange server has become unstable or corrupted to some reason, you might want to use the contents stored in the local OST files to recover data. The most important step in this recovery process concerns what you should not do! Do not delete the mailbox that is associated with the OST files before you have finished exporting all the data into the PST file. If you delete the mailbox before exporting, the server is not able to confirm that the OST files trying to access the mailbox are the ones associated with that particular profile. This may end up making the OST file completely inaccessible. Of course, you could use powerful recovery tools such as Advanced Exchange Recovery from DataNumen to carry out ost recovery and minimize the data loss.
However, the best way to recover all the data from OST files would be to first finish exporting them into PST files, create a new user profile and mailbox and then import all the data into the mailbox.