Email disappeard

[WJason]

I re-imaged a user's PC two weeks ago. Re-installed Outlook2003sp3. Server
is Microsoft Exchange (not sure which version). Since then, the user's Inbox
does not have any email prior to the re-image date. There are several
subfolders containing older emails (up to 2 years old) but the main Inbox
folder has email going back only two weeks. The Current View is set to
Messages. I've tried rebuilding the Inbox. User claims that Autoarchive
was turned off (and I did not look for an archive folder before re-imaging
the machine so if there was one it is lost). Any ideas why the Inbox might
not be fully restored? The OST file is 300MB. Outlook says "All folders are
up to date".

Jason

 

[K. Orland]

Was the user moving their email to a personal folder (PST)?

 

[WJason]

No. He says he had about 1000 emails in the root Inbox folder. Now there
are only a dozen or so going back two weeks.

 

[K. Orland]

Since this is an Exchange account and basically Outlook is simple interface
to the server where all the user's mail, appointments, etc. are kept I would
want to ask in the Exchange group.

However, I would first check the mailbox size on the Outlook side (right
click on Outlook Today, scroll to properties and check the folder sizes). You
can't really compare it exactly against what the Exchange Information Store
holds since it is fairly dynamic. You can at least compare the size of the
Inbox folder to what you see in the Inbox.

You may want to also open Outlook with the /cleanviews switch just on the
outside chance the view has actually been altered.

Failing that, ask in the Exchange Admin newsgroup. I've reimaged many PC's
in an Exchange environment and not had emails go missing from the date of the
reimage and prior unless the mail had been moved from the Exchange mailbox.

 

[Wazza]

We've had several instances where e-mail "disappeared", but the customer
insisted they had never ever ever done anything. It turned out, that the
customer had logged onto a different PC. Something on **that** PC caused
outlook to fail connecting to the server automatically on launch and resulted
in the mail delivery location being a newly created PST in the user profile
on that PC. All the e-mail was removed from the mailbox to the PST, resulting
in what would be a rather empty mailbox. This is a relatively common
occurence for us with OL2002 on Ex 5.5 (we've upgraded now, but some still to
be migrated).

Maybe this is your scenario? Where was the user when the PC was re-imaged...?

 

[WJason]

thanks! that just might be it. There are four users in an office with two
PCs. They are "assigned" two to each PC, but when things like re-imaging
happen, they will log into the other pc and continue working. I'll check the
other PC for his email. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[Brian Tillman]

I re-imaged a user's PC two weeks ago. Re-installed Outlook2003sp3.
Server is Microsoft Exchange (not sure which version). Since then,
the user's Inbox does not have any email prior to the re-image date.
There are several subfolders containing older emails (up to 2 years
old) but the main Inbox folder has email going back only two weeks.
The Current View is set to Messages. I've tried rebuilding the
Inbox. User claims that Autoarchive was turned off (and I did not
look for an archive folder before re-imaging the machine so if there
was one it is lost). Any ideas why the Inbox might not be fully
restored? The OST file is 300MB. Outlook says "All folders are up
to date".

Perhaps they had their delivery location set to a local PST. That would be
my guess.

 

[Brian Tillman]

No. He says he had about 1000 emails in the root Inbox folder. Now
there are only a dozen or so going back two weeks.

What people THINK is the case and what actually is, especially with Outlook,
can be very different. I still vote for them having the mail delivered to a
PST.