Throughout his career, he has covered complex concepts and provided accessible solutions for users. Before joining Secure Data, he worked as a freelance technical writer. If you moved your data file or its location changed somehow, Outlook might not be able to find how to fix Outlook not opening today it.

Fixing 'Outlook Data File Cannot Be Accessed' Error on PC

In that window, ensure the "Documents" folder is not enabled to sync to OneDrive. Timothy Burlee is a content writer for Secure Data disable faulty add-ins in Outlook Recovery Services. He specializes in various topics in the data industry, including data recovery technology, storage devices, and digital forensics.

• If you moved your data file or its location changed somehow, Outlook might not be able to find it.
• Sometimes, data files get corrupted in a way that none of the methods above can help.
• The Inbox Repair tool creates a backup file with the same name as the original, but with a .bak extension, and saves it in the same folder.
• Our Outlook Express file repair software is designed to help you repair your files and recover your data, so you don’t lose access to anything you need.
• If your email server supports both IMAP and POP3, auto account setup will create an IMAP account by default.

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To make sure this is not the case, try opening Outlook and see if it found the data file. Then, in the next window, make sure you're on the tab marked "Sync and backup". On the righthand side of the window, choose the button to "manage backup".

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During the syncing process, OneDrive locks the file, which prevents Outlook from accessing it, resulting in the "Outlook data file cannot be opened" error. You can try to repair Outlook data files to fix the error. This is a good solution if you think your data file might be corrupted. MS Outlook stores all the information related to your email account both online and in a local file on your computer.

Repair Outlook Data Files (.pst and .ost)

From single external hard drives, SSD’s, mobile devices to enterprise NAS, SAN, and RAID failures, we are ready to help recover from digital disasters, anywhere. When you want to replicate a copy on the cloud, manually copy the PST in the OneDrive folder. This will result in one copy in the folder in OneDrive being used for backup purposes, and another copy in your Outlook client that can be kept open by Outlook. Outlook 2013 and 2016, users of both have reported this issue.



Sometimes, data files get corrupted in a way that none of the methods above can help. This might happen due to a power failure or improper shutdown, hardware issues, or viruses and malware. This could happen if, for example, OneDrive backs up your Documents folder flush DNS and re-sync Outlook to the cloud and includes the Outlook Files folder where the file is located.