Cached Exchange Mode makes e-mail from three weeks ago disappear

[Adrian Todd Peck]

I am running Small Business Server 2000 with Exchange 2000 in an
environment of about 25 computers running Office 2003 Professional.
We will soon be getting rid of our POP3 email provider, so I wanted to
slowly migrate people into cached exchange mode so that we can
implement the Junk E-mail folder (as well as a third party gateway
spam catcher). When I open Outlook, and change their Exchange e-mail
account to cached mode, and then restart Outlook; it syncs fine with
the server and gives no errors. However when I view the Inbox, there
are only messages that go back as far as "Three Weeks Ago". Anything
older has disappeared, and seems to only affect the Inbox and not any
other subfolders and folders. I have only updated 4 computers to
exchange mode out of the 25, and I have had the same problem on 3 of
them. Of course when I did mine everything worked fine (figures).
Luckly I had created mailbox backups using Exmerge earlier this
month, so I could restore these missing e-mails. Any ideas?

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

I am running Small Business Server 2000 with Exchange 2000 in an
environment of about 25 computers running Office 2003 Professional.
We will soon be getting rid of our POP3 email provider, so I wanted to
slowly migrate people into cached exchange mode so that we can
implement the Junk E-mail folder (as well as a third party gateway
spam catcher). When I open Outlook, and change their Exchange e-mail
account to cached mode, and then restart Outlook; it syncs fine with
the server and gives no errors. However when I view the Inbox, there
are only messages that go back as far as "Three Weeks Ago". Anything
older has disappeared, and seems to only affect the Inbox and not any
other subfolders and folders. I have only updated 4 computers to
exchange mode out of the 25, and I have had the same problem on 3 of
them. Of course when I did mine everything worked fine (figures).
Luckly I had created mailbox backups using Exmerge earlier this
month, so I could restore these missing e-mails. Any ideas?

Are you sure they were actually missing? If you disabled cached mode, did it
resolve it?
Had you already imported everyone's PST files into their Exchange mailbox,
and gotten rid of the PST files from the profiles?

 

[Guest]

I'm not sure if reverting back to normal mode will help,
but will try. The PST files that I created were from a
mailbox backup that I ran after hours using Exmerge. I
noticed when converting to cached mode about a month later
that cached exchange mode had made all email in the Inbox
older than three weeks disappear. Now, this has only
happened to three of the four people I have tried. So
instead of doing some sort of backup from a tape of the
emails that are missing, I simply copied the backup PST
that I made from a month before to each computer's C
drive. I then went into Outlook and opened the data file
so that they could view and transfer email to their
mailbox that they wanted. It seems strange that I haven't
been able to find much info on this, as far as other
people having problems. Please help!

Todd

 

[Guest]

Also the Outlook 2003 client had all updates applied
before switching to "cached exchange mode", so I know
this is not a solution.

 

[Guest]

Reverting back to Normal mode did make the missing emails
reappear. I think there needs to be some sort of fix for
this issue.

Todd

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

Reverting back to Normal mode did make the missing emails
reappear. I think there needs to be some sort of fix for
this issue.

Delete the OST file and then re-enable cached mode to see if it helps.