8 months of Deleted and Sent Messages Missing from Outlook

[bokee88]

I had to reformat my hard drive. Saved a copy of 800 MB pst file on an
external hard drive. After reformat, I reinstalled Outlook and Imported the
..pst file.

After importing the .pst file I noticed several messages were missing from
the Sent and Deleted messages. I started up this .pst file in May 2006.

All of my Deleted and Sent messages from May 2006 until Nov 2007 are present.

All of my Deleted and Sent messages from Nov 2007 until now are missing.

Why are these 8 months of messages not there?

I believe they are in that backed up pst file because the backup was still
800 MB, while the new .pst that I started up shrunk to only 600 MB. I tried
the scanpst.exe program but that didn't change anything.

Any ideas? Thanks.

-Brian

 

[Vince Averello [MVP - Outlook]]

Not sure but I have to ask... why do you care if deleted messages are
missing? You deleted them... now they're gone. Seems like a match made in
Heaven.

The Sent items are another story. If you open the PST file you saved
directly (File menu > Open > Outlook Data File), are the items there?

 

[bokee88]

Vince,

Thanks for helping. No. When I first reformated I tried to just do a
"File-Open" but I ended up with nothing when I did that. Literally nothing.
There were no messages, my calendar was empty, etc. However, the Import did
bring a substantial amount.

(As for the Deleted messages, I wish I could agree but for some reason I
find myself wanting to go back to track what some one wrote to me the last
time we communicated a lot. I am sales, so I need to be reminded what they
said 2 months ago but I don't want to save them in a special folder, so I
"save" them in my Deleted folder. If that makes any sense.)

Thanks again for the help. Do you have any ideas?

-Brian

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

If you need the messages, you are much better off moving them to a special
folder - mine is called "completed" and all message I need kept are moved to
it when I'm done with them so my mailbox isn't quite so large.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]



Outlook Tips by email:
(e-mail address removed)

EMO - a weekly newsletter about Outlook and Exchange:
(e-mail address removed)

You can access this newsgroup by visiting
http://www.microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/default.mspx or point your
newsreader to msnews.microsoft.com.

 

[Pat Willener]

Try again File | Open | Data File; make sure you specify the correct file.

 

[bokee88]

Pat,

Thanks for your help. I thought of that, but I double checked it again
yesterday. When I originally reformatted my computer, I purposely renamed
the .pst file on the external hard drive I backed it up to so that it had the
date in the name. Then, when I went to File Open that day and again
yesterday, I am sure I picked the file because of the name and because it was
teh only 800 MB file in the folder.

Thanks,

-Brian

 

[Pat Willener]

Brian,

If you open your PST file backup with Outlook, you should see *exactly*
what you have seen in the original PST file. I have no explanation why
you have email messages missing. Is it possible that they have been
archived (AutoArchive) somehow before the backup?

 

[bokee88]

I don't know how to explain it either. I did not do archiving. I had the
same thing happen just last week, but I left it out of this string to avoid
confusion. Here is what happened...

Sunday I had a Windows Update show up. I let it run and then went to bed.
The next morning, I had a restart waiting for me. After it restarted, my IE,
Outlook, and Windows Media all acted like I never used them before. My
desktop changed, it was really odd. But what is relevant to this string is
that when I opened up OUtlook and all my emails were gone. So, I told it to
Import my .pst file. My Inbox was intact, along with other folders, but my
Sent Items and Deleted Items were missing the last month of emails (all the
emails since I did the reformat that I wrote about initially). So, I did a
system restore and all the last month showed up. However, I cannot do a
system restore to bring back that 8 month gap of emails because it was from
before I did the reformat.

The reason I am telling this is that the same exact thing happened to the
Sent and Deleted Items folders. Luckily I had a way to undo it, but I have a
hunch that the next time I have to change Outlook profile or change to a new
computer, all of my Sent and Deleted Items will be gone again.

Any other ideas?

-Brian