Hi Everyone,

A colleague of mine has recently lost approximately 6 - 8 weeks of emails from his PST file. He doesn't believe that he deleted the period in question. I am wondering if anybody has "lost" messages - and if so what was done to recover them?

I have looked in his deleted items folder and there was no sign of the "lost" messages; so unless he pressed SHIFT + DEL on the messages in question I doubt that he deleted them!



Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Kind Regards,

Davo

Is email Account: POP, IMAP, or Exchange?

Since it's a PST, I'm guessing it's a POP or IMAP connection. Most of the times I've seen "lost" email, they've either been moved to a different folder or archived. First thing I would do is check if there are any additional .PST files, particularly archive.pst files, in the folder that contains his regular .PST file. Otherwise, I'd check each folder (including the drafts, sent items, etc).

We all these missing messages from approximately the same time frame?

Hello Kaneto,

Yes most of the missing messages are from the same time frame.

However I have checked the Archive Folder and the messages don't appear to be in there; and furthermore the messages shouldn't have been archived due to not being "old" enough.

Thanks for your help and suggestions.

Kind Regards,

Davo

Hi,

Outlook 2007 provides the feature to recover permanently deleted item even when you have deleted them from Deleted Items folder when it is associated with Exchange Sever. Also recovery of items depends upon some retention* time which is set by administrator even if you are using exchange account.

There is some retention time specified for permanently deleted items by exchange administrator on the server running Exchange. Once this time passes the deleted items can not be recovered.

To recover the deleted items you need to follow the below mentioned steps -

1. In Deleted Items Folder, or in the folder from where you deleted the items, Click Tools menu → Recover Deleted Items. If you don't see the Recover Deleted Item option even if your are using an exchange account contact your exchange administrator.

2.Select the items that you want to recover and click on Recover Selected Items icon. This will restore the items back to their original place from where these were deleted.

Regards

Jane

Hello Jane,

Thanks very much for your advice. I will try your steps shortly.

Kind Regards,

Davo