Why Is Outlook "Verifying Data Integrity"?

I'm not very experienced in this area, but One of the computers at my workplace, when starting outlook, will say "verifying data integrity" on start up very frequently and will take hours to complete. I have been searching around a little while to see what kind of answer I can find to this problem. First here are some details about his mailbox.

Update: Saving the old .OST file with a different name and allowing outlook to re-download the .OST file was the fix for me on this one.

-His mailbox is 29.4G in size he has had trouble in the past with emails in the sent box duplicating (this hasn't happened recently but isn't necessarily fixed)

-He has 2 .OST files listed in %appdata% for outlook, both of which are 49.8G in size

Question 1: Is he supposed to have 2 .OST files? I only have one on mine.

Question 2: Is he getting this verification error because his .OST is basically 50 gigs?

concerning .OST, I read that the max is 50 gigs for outlook 2010 here and read that the size of the .OST could be a problem here. How can I fix this? Thanks in Advance

Mike Kellogg

Posted 2013-01-11T19:57:40.680

Reputation: 125

Have you tried running scanpst on these files? – Nicole Hamilton – 2013-01-11T20:13:21.030

@NicoleHamilton no not yet, I can try that. I am a little worried about potential for losing tons of emails this way though. – Mike Kellogg – 2013-01-11T20:22:30.090

2Then backup the files first. You can also try copying to contents to a new file, dragging and dropping from inside Outlook, then running scanpst against the copy. – Nicole Hamilton – 2013-01-11T20:25:39.040

@NicoleHamilton that is a good idea, I may try that and see what happens. – Mike Kellogg – 2013-01-11T20:34:05.037

Answers

sounds like a corrupt OST file. I'm assuming this is an Exchange E-mail setup, usually I just go to the %APPDATA%, then go back from ROAMING to APPDATA\Local\Microsoft\Outlook location and rename the problematic OST file to like .OST.OLD which forces Outlook to just download all the e-mail from the server again. Then I would seriously consider having this user Archive older e-mails so their mailbox is around 2 GB. Not sure why there are 2 OST files unless he has 2 different Exchange accounts installed within Outlook, or maybe one is a corrupt OST file from the past where this troubleshooting technique was already used? You can click File-->Account Settings, and then click the Data Files tab to see if that OST file is loaded, and associated with an Exchange account that has been added to Outlook.

j_bombay

Posted 2013-01-11T19:57:40.680

Reputation: 640

Yes it is an exchange email setup sorry for not including that. – Mike Kellogg – 2013-01-11T20:11:04.363

I will check if both OST's are associated with actual accounts, if one isn't then I should be able to get rid of it, also, I assume you rename the OST to "old.." so that if you need to, you can just return the name to its original state? – Mike Kellogg – 2013-01-11T20:14:02.320

1yea I rename the file to like user@company.com.old, anything other than the original filename so Outlook can't find it and is forced to download the whole inbox (which will probably take awhile. You could also close out Outlook and run SCANPST.exe in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14, but that takes forever too, and freezes up but you just have to let it run its course). Since those are such big files if you find that the OST is not needed you could probably delete it. – j_bombay – 2013-01-11T20:22:39.653

This is some helpful info. I will try changing the name, I have been a little resistant to try ScanPst because it says http://support.microsoft.com/kb/272227 on this link that there is potential for losing emails.

– Mike Kellogg – 2013-01-11T20:27:13.237

I usually dont use Scanpst.exe unless the user is on a POP account, in those situations their email is probably no longer on the server and only stored in a .pst file on their local PC. – j_bombay – 2013-01-11T20:28:56.670

cool man give me a thumbs up if this ends up working for you ;) – j_bombay – 2013-01-11T20:29:26.357

Hereby distributing a lot of e-mails into YEARLY PERSONAL MAILBOX may solve or even prevent 'Verifying Data Integrity' before it happened.

Users may be informed to do 'periodic housekeeping' on their own 'Inbox', so gigantic OST is avoid.

Rhak Kahr

Posted 2013-01-11T19:57:40.680

Reputation: 191

I don't know much about Microsoft Outlook, but is his address a Microsoft one? Or any other that you know mail is stored online and doesn't have a size limit? (Gmail is limited to a few GB, but Hotmail is unlimited, I believe.)

If so, there should be a way to sync inboxes so that his email shows up on Outlook.com / Hotmail.com, which is stored on their servers, and independent from his eventual file integrity issues.

I think he should put his entire inbox online, if possible, and then delete every trace of Microsoft Outlook 2010 and his email on the computer. And then reinstall Outlook and fetch his email back. Email that's at Microsoft isn't stored as files - at least I REALLY don't think so - but database entries. By redownloading his mail, the files in which his messages are should be created anew.

Doing so, all the "data" that could have integrity problems has been remade from A to Z. If this doesn't solve the issue, then I don't know.

PS: Beware, if you have some other email software, such as Windows 8's default program or the Mozilla one, there's a possibility those still hold the mail and Outlook would fetch it there. Make sure no mail, contacts, anything, remains locally, and that every single file can be created anew.

Ariane

Posted 2013-01-11T19:57:40.680

Reputation: 1 907