... sounds straightforward, right?

Here's the situation: I periodically back up my main hard drive to a secondary hard drive within the computer and also to an external drive. Therefore - I think - all my Outlook files and folders should be copied in the course of that process.

Three times recently, I've intended to permanently delete ( i.e. shift + delete ) an individual e-mail and ended up deleting the folder that contains it. I don't know how or why this has happened - it never has before. Luckily, in two out of the three cases, it hasn't mattered that much, as the folders didn't contain anything critically important. Unluckily, that wasn't true in the third case.

Given the fact of the backups, in theory, I'd have thought that in the same way as you would with a Windows folder, you could just copy-and-paste the folder from the backup to where you want it to be in the working drive; but of course, that doesn't work with Outlook. So far, I have to admit, I haven't even succeeded in finding the folder in question on the backup drive, which makes me think that I'm either looking for the wrong thing or looking in the wrong place ( or, arguably, both ); but the fact still remains that even if I find the folder in question, I have no idea how to restore it from it's home on the D drive to where it should be within Outlook on the C drive.

I hope I've explained that adequately - if not, please ask - but assuming I have, any help in achieving what seems like it should be much simpler than I'm making it, would be much appreciated.