Billy said:
I deleted several critical emails from my Outlook 2003 inbox on a
small home based business LAN. It's not an Exchange server, just using
Comcast ISP. My backups don't go far enough back to recover. I need
these emails back desperately because they incise client historical
records that can't be redone. I empty the deleted items regularly but
I do not compact.
I have tried some basic hex editor to corrupt (not sure if it really
did corrupt) then scanpst to try and get back, but nothing reappeared
in outlook.
Will these emails really still exist in my PST and what can I use that
will work to recover them?
Um, your backups don't go far enough back? Wouldn't you only lose these
e-mails from your Inbox if they were recent? That means you don't have
backups that are recent enough to cover recently received e-mails. It
wouldn't be how far back but how recent are your backups. If this is a
business, as you claim, why aren't backups performed daily?
Were these e-mails received today (and you haven't yet performed today's
backup)? If so, wouldn't the sender still have the info to send you
another e-mail? In fact, they probably have it sitting in their Sent
Items folder and can simply re-send you their e-mail.
Or have you been so foolish as to use your Inbox folder as a holding
folder? Very wrong. It's the *INBOX* folder. If you decide to hold
onto e-mails you receive in the Inbox folder, move them to another
folder to organize your e-mails. For e-mails that you intend to keep,
move them OUT of the Inbox folder.
Items moved into the Deleted Items folder have not actually been
deleted. They've just been moved. Items that you delete from the
Deleted Items folder or permanently delete (Shift+Del) are still in the
..pst message store file but Outlook will not display delete-marked
items. There is no Undo or Undelete function in Outlook to change the
status of delete-marked items.
Do you have Outlook configured to automatically send receipts? If so,
why? Do you have Outlook configured to prompt when to send a requested
read receipt and you chose to send one? Read receipts are hidden by
Outlook in the Outbox folder, and Outlook has problems sending read
receipts which gets them stuck in the Outbox folder (where you can't see
them). You will need a 3rd party utility that can dig into the database
(.pst file), like Outlookspy or Microsoft's MDBVU32.EXE; however, unless
you understand the database structure, you won't know how to use these
tools. You should also play with these tools on a *copy* of your .pst
file, or save your original .pst file somewhere else. Considering the
expertise in knowing how to use these utilities, why not just ask the
sender to re-send their copy of their e-mail that is sitting in their
Sent Items folder?
You never mentioned WHICH version of Windows that you use. If Vista,
why not employ their backup scheme to provide for file versioning? See
http://lifehacker.com/software/top/windows-vista-beta-rave:-built+in-file-versioning-180130.php.
