Complete outlook folder and emails disappeared

[pinstripes]

Hello,
I was deleting one email in an outlook folder (a personal folder), and the entire folder and contents--all emails--disappeared. Can't find them anywhere...They did not go to the delete folder. Any way to retrieve them? Do you know what happened? (I have Windows XP.)
Thank you for your help...
H

 

[Saga Lout]

Hello,
I was deleting one email in an outlook folder (a personal folder), and the entire folder and contents--all emails--disappeared. Can't find them anywhere...They did not go to the delete folder. Any way to retrieve them? Do you know what happened? (I have Windows XP.)
Thank you for your help...
H

Open My Computer and click the Tools menu then Folder Options., Click the View tab and scroll down to "Show hidden files and folders" and tick that. Further down, untick "Hide protected system files", accept the warnign then click Apply and OK your way out.

Now go to Documents and Settings>{yourname}>Local Settings>Application Data>Microsoft>Outlook. If there is a file called archive.pst dated the day you made this change, rename the file called Outlook.pst and call it Outlook.old then rename the archive.pst and name it Outlook.pst. Restart the computer and see if Outlook shows all your mails. Don't do any renaming if the archive file is older than the action you took when deleting a mail.[/#000ff]

 

[hang-the-9]

Did you do a Shift-Delete? If you did, you may be in trouble, that delete by-passes the recycle bin or the Deleted Items folder. And since your emails are stored in the .pst file, they are not actually files that a file recovery program can find. There may be specialized programs to recover deleted emails, but I have not heard of any aside from using a backup of the whole .pst file.

 

[pinstripes]

Wow...Thank you, Saga Lout, for this detailed, helpful answer!

 

[pinstripes]

Thank you, hang-the-9! I don't think I did a Shift Delete...but I am grateful to know this information.

 

[pinstripes]

Best answer selected by pinstripes.

 

[Saga Lout]

Best answer selected by pinstripes.

nnThanks for the vote, pinstripes. It's always a good idea to add those files to the list of cumulative backups in whichever utility (I hope) you use regularly. [/#000ff]n