If your exchange sever is down, the connected Outlook profile won't work. This may lead to OST file corruptions.
Hardware failure is also a possibility for OST file corruption.
Virus attack and trojan infection can also cause the corruption of OST file.
Improper system shutdown or sudden power cut can also corrupt the data file.
Besides these reasons, there could be other technical glitches that can corrupt the OST file or any other file / folder in a device.
The corrupt OST file is impossible to open in MS Outlook directly. However, if you convert OST to PST file format, it is possible. For this, first you should know that OST and PST files are Outlook data file formats. Microsoft Outlook creates these types of files to store its data base on any system hard drive.
OST file is a cached copy of exchange mailbox. Outlook creates OST file, when you configure it with MS Exchange. On the other hand, if you configure MS Outlook locally on your PC using any IMAP account then Outlook creates PST file to store its database. You can know the exact difference between OST and PST file formats.
You can open the PST file in any MS Outlook profile, Office 365 account or OWA accounts. Thus, when you convert a corrupt OST to PST file, you can open the PST in any MS Outlook account that you have.
There are many ways to convert OST to PST. You can do it manually; or opt for a professional tool to get the job done quickly. If we talk about the manual method, then there are many challenges:
You cannot convert multiple OST files in bulk
There is a fair chance of losing the data present within the OST file
You cannot convert orphan OST files to PST manually
It is a very time-consuming job to export OST to PST manually
One needs to be technically sound to perform the manual conversion
Considering all the above factors; it is wiser to opt for an OST to PST converter to perform the migration. These tools are trustworthy and potent enough to export complete data from orphan, corrupt, or old OST files into PST file format, keeping the folder hierarchy intact.