Mail not being added to google desktop index

[Guest]

Asked a question on one of the google desktop fora but no response yet so
perhaps those here will have experience of this.

We have been indexing with GD successfully for some years, but for some
reason it has stopped adding Outlook mail to the index since 12 Dec. It
continues adding other indexing items.

The google add on is showing as being turned on in Outlook's options.

It looks as though the next thing to try is to reinstall GD but we don't
want to lose the existing index as it contains mail which we lost in an
earlier pst file corruption.

Does anyone know if GD can be 'repaired' without completely reinstalling.
And/or if we can reinstall without losing the existing index.

Many thanks for any useful feedback.

Cheers,
S

 

[Roady [MVP]]

It could be that a pst-file corruption is actually preventing the indexer
from continuing to index the file. Scan your pst-file for errors with
scanpst.exe. To locate it for your version see;
http://www.msoutlook.info/question/77

You probably want to find a solution to save those orphaned indexed items to
some sort of text file sooner or later as your index is probably not going
to hold them forever. They would also be lost when you someday need to move
to another machine.

 

[Guest]

Thank you Robert,

Will check the pst, though very wary of tampering with same! As the
'rebuilding profile' message one can get next time one turns on is decidedly
frightening! (Have backed up the psts though...). Is the scan pst safe and
able to repair without loss?

As for saving the 'orphaned indexed items', I have asked if there were any
utilities out there that could extract from a google index file before.
Extracting text is one thing, getting it all assembled into dated individual
mails is something else entirely - as is finding a reader big enough to
display the index file! Separating out the ones that only exist on the
index file is another thing again.

If a utility has been developed since last I asked, that can do this, I
would be interested to know about it.

Cheers,

S

 

[Roady [MVP]]

If scanpst.exe is able to fully fix your pst-file and do that without any
data loss is entirely up to any corruption that might be in the pst-file.
Making a backup of the pst-file is therefore always a good thing and also
offered by the tool itself before starting to do any repair. The article I
referred to you also holds a link to 3rd party recovery tools which are more
in-dept than the scanpst.exe utility; just in case.

That said, if your current pst-file holds unrecoverable errors and the
backup from before the repair is still accessible, then I would simply start
with a new pst-file and copy over the contents. That process is described
here;
http://www.msoutlook.info/question/329

As for recovering something out of the Google index, I would contact Google
Support directly about it. They might have some methods to et it out there
safely. Maybe just in Plain Text, maybe convert it to a Access database but
anything is better than leaving it in limbo where it is now ;-)

 

[Guest]

Thanks again,

Will look into it.

I did ask the google groups about this - both these issues. No replies on
the current problem so far. But there was nothing on the extraction front
at the time I last asked, either. I did manage to extract to text but, as I
said, this is a vast file of gobbledegook that is no use to anyone without
algorithms to decode it all into messages, web pages etc.

S

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Google Groups is not the same as Google Support. Google Groups are just web
based newsgroups usually answered by other users.
That said, actually contacting Google Support is quite hard.

You might want to try this article. It also discusses how to get it into the
mbox format.
http://duramecho.com/ComputerInformation/HowToRecoverLostEmailsFromGdsCache/

From there you should be able to get mbox file linked or imported in Mozilla
Thunderbird (free mail client). Configure that account with a IMAP enabled
account (such as Gmail) to get it on a mail server. Then configure the Gmail
account with Outlook to download it again and move it into a pst-file.

Maybe a bit cumbersome, but at least you'd get it out of the index then and
into workable data then.

 

[Guest]

Thanks once again Robert.

Looks like someone clever has been looking at this problem since last I
investigated!

It sounds a bit above my level but very interesting. Would the command
prompt respond to the 'perl' programming given, or would I need to download
and install some extras before it could work?

Definitely a step in the right direction anyhow. V clever!

Cheers,

S

 

[Guest]

Followed various leads on this.
Tried uninstaling and reinstalling GD several times, and reindexing several
times without success.
Other threads mentioned deleting the 'extend.dat' file.
The first time I tried this, nothing changed. But later, when I happened to
come across it again in doing a back up, I tried deleting it again, and was
pleasantly surprised to find the '16 Dec' 'last item' had gone, once I'd
rebooted. Now waiting the reindex with baited breath...

So, sort of fixed, but no real clue as to why!

Cheers to those who advised.

S