Jan said:
HELP! One of my outlook 2010 subfolders has disappeared. I've looked in all
folders that have subfolders thinking it may have accidentally been dragged
somewhere, but alas, it is nowhere. Is it possible to recover a single
folder from a backup .pst file?
Don't know about the 2010 version but in earlier versions it is possible
to move something into the root folder (top node in the tree list for a
message store) where it will be hidden. The "Outlook Today" root node
uses a special view because it wasn't intended for item storage. You
have to right-click on the root node, Properties, and select NOT to use
the "home page" view. Then items moved into that node are visible.
If you deleted the item from the Deleted Items folder (obviously nothing
got deleted but merely moved into this folder) or you used Shift+Del
both of which will permanently delete an item, well, then it's
permanently deleted. You never mentioned where the item was when you
deleted it, like if under the Deleted Items folder, or if you did the
permanent delete using the Shift+Del key combo. A permanently deleted
item still exists in the message store. It gets tagged Deleted and
Outlook will not display delete-tagged items. On the next compaction of
the message store, all delete-tagged items get physically removed from
the message store. Before compaction, you will need to use special
software to hack into the message store to untag the delete-marked
items, like OutlookSpy (there may be other similar tools but I remember
this one). Using such hacking software requires knowledge of the
message store and its structure or the willingness to hack away blind
and hope you can figure it out as you go, so obviously you want to keep
a backup copy of the .pst file before hacking at it.
While mentioned backups, why not just restore the .pst file from your
backups? If you don't backup then you deem your data as worthless or
reproducible. If you have a backup .pst file, you don't need to replace
your current one. Just use File -> Open (or equivalent in 2010) to load
the other .pst file. It will show up as its own tree for that message
store. Then copy or drag anything you want between the tree lists for
each message store.
