Forum Discussion
Cannot use ost saved file reinstalling account in outlook 2016 for windows
I have Ms Outlook 2016 on win 10 I had MS Outlook hanged, It did not downloaded incoming mails. After some various and unsuccesful attempts to solve the problem I saved Ost and Pst files (both abo...
Hi frktest,
The OST-file is an Offline Outlook Data File that downloads all of part of the emails from the mailserver (offline caching). You can not reuse this file. Only a PST-file can be used.
I would recommend starting from a freshly created OST file and let the Outlook Desktop App download the emails from the mailserver.
Also check in the Outlook Desktop App: View > Change View > IMAP Messages if emails are seem to be missing.
Regarding backups, please note that it is important to check that the Microsoft Desktop App did download ALL emails from the emailserver before exporting them to a PST-file.
Thank you very much for your response.
Since my email address is @gmail.com and outlook was set to IMAP I have no problem with incoming messages as they are saved on gmail server.
The problem I'm trying to solve is that I lost all sent messages (about 4000).
If I cannot reuse OST file there is a way to recover them?
Actually I was confident to be on safe having saved a 4 GB data OST file.
When you say to let the Outlook Desktop App download the emails from the mailserver, do you mean that it will download sent messeges again too?
Thanks a lot for your help
Hi frktest,
IMAP wil also sync the sent items from the mailserver.
When you open a browser and sign-in to gmail.com, are all missing sent items available there?- No, because the sent messeges have been written and sent with outlook.
- You can try to repair the OST with third part software.