Errors have been detected in the OST

Barclay Tcareva

Updated On - October 19, 2022

 4 Simple Ways to deal with ‘Errors have been detected in the OST’

In Outlook 2016 or 2013, users may get the error message ‘Errors have been detected in your .ost file’. The exact message that will appear on your screen is:

“Errors have been detected in the file C:\Users\<name>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\user@org.com.ost”

It implies that your Offline Outlook Data File (OST) is corrupted. You can deal with this issue in different ways as give here:

A. Re-downloading Information from Microsoft Exchange Server

It is the most rarely known alternative to handle OST errors. The reason could be that it’s a recent inception. This can be used by the Outlook users working on 2013 and later versions. The steps involved in this method are:

1. Close the Outlook program.
2. Browse to the default location of Outlook application i.e. %localappdata%\Microsoft\outlook.
3. Locate the OST file that is reported for containing errors and delete it.
4. Then, launch Outlook.

The Outlook application will now attempt to re-download the information from the active Microsoft Exchange Server. And the new OST file created will be free of errors.

B. Resynchronize the Outlook folders

In earlier versions of Outlook, you could try OST integrity check tool to fix the synchronization issues. However, this tool was discontinued form Outlook 2010 onwards. So to fix the synchronization issues, you can follow the procedure given below:

1. Right-click the Outlook folder and select Properties.
2. Select the ‘Clear Offline Items’ from the dialog box that appears.
3. Click OK and then click ‘Send/Receive’ tab on Outlook ribbon
4. Finally, click ‘Update Folder’.

C. Create a new Outlook profile

In rare cases, the reason for this error could be the issues with the default Outlook profile. You can follow the below-listed steps to create a new Outlook profile:

1. Delete the existing default Outlook profile.
2. Setup a new profile.
3. Mark this new profile as default one.

D. OST to PST Conversion

You can try fixing OST errors using any of the above-mentioned manual tricks. If none of these work in your case, you have third-party OST to PST conversion tools as the fourth option. Choosing reliable tools like Recoveryfix for OST to PST can really help you to get rid of OST errors and inaccessibility issues without disturbing the data integrity. OST to PST conversion is more desirable, when your OST files contain data that is not saved to the Exchange mailboxes.

Conclusion: You can easily fix OST errors using different manual procedures including recreating Outlook profile. However, there are certain issues that can only be dealt with the help of the powerful tool like Recoveryfix for OST to PST.