Some of the more common errors that crop up when you have been using Outlook for some time are as follows:
· It may take Outlook a long time to start, download emails or to send messages.
· You keep getting more error messages or Outlook crashes more frequently.
· It takes a long time to open Outlook folders or to switch folders.
· Outlook responds very slowly and very erratically to your commands.
· If you minimize Outlook and leave it in the Windows systray, there are occasions when it takes a very long time to restart from that position.
While all these indicate that there has been degradation in the quality of the PST file, instead of immediately looking for a repair tool to attempt outlook recovery, you may be better off taking some steps to make Outlook work more efficiently.
When you first started using Outlook, there were not too many folders, email messages, journals or appointments to take care of. As you keep using Outlook and storing all kinds of data, Outlook has to work harder to keep its performance level up. Some steps that you could take to make Outlook work faster are as below:
· You need not always work with Outlook in an online mode, especially if you are on a slow Internet connection. The speed of the connection could considerably slow down the response time of Outlook and you are better off working offline most of the time, going online only when you need to download or send mail messages. The other option is to configure Outlook so that you keep working online but only the email headers of incoming mails are downloaded ' this will let you see if there is anything important you need to attend to without having to wait for the entire email to download.
· Large Outlook folders (PST files) are difficult for Outlook to handle efficiently and can end up being damaged. In such a case, an outlook recovery may be the only way in which you can safely retrieve all your data. As new items are being added to the PST file, it gradually becomes more and more fragmented. By regularly defragmenting your disk or at least the partition where the PST file is stored, you can ensure that there is no delay in accessing the data and Outlook can respond much faster.
Despite taking these steps, if you find that there are a growing number of errors or you find yourself unable to access any folders, it might already be too late and your PST file may have become damaged. Even then, by using tools such as Advanced Outlook Repair from DataNumen, you can ensure that there is no loss of data by quickly carrying out an outlook recovery. Tools such as Advanced Outlook Repair can work on fairly large files, even those running into terabytes and restore the output into smaller PST files so that Outlook can work more efficiently with them.