Recover emails from lost old domain user profile.

[J]

Hi. I was in a rush and made a big mistake. A user at my company needed his
personal laptop (XP Pro) added to our domain this evening so that he could
work remotely (via VPN) over the next few days and access various network
drives. He had been using his personal laptop with a domain profile from a
company he worked for long ago (just without actually accessing his old
company's network). Under that profile, he was accessing a POP3 email
account through Outlook 2003. Some of you can probably anticipate what I'm
about to say next.

By adding his computer to my company's domain using the Network ID Wizard, I
lost his old domain profile. So, he cannot log into his old profile to
launch Outlook and get to his emails.

I have the local Administrator password and am therefore able navigate to
his old profile and get to his work files (i.e. Word docs, Excel files,
etc.). I can also do this under the new profile that I created for him upon
joining my domain because his new profile has local admin rights. I just
cannot get his old emails for him.

I found a .pst file at C:\Documents and Settings\"old domain profile"\Local
Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook. But, it is dated from a year
ago. And, as expected, it only contains emails from a year ago.

Any help towards recovering this user's emails would be very much appreciated.

Thank You,
J

 

[dlw]

If the emails were on the laptop, they would be in a pst file. If they are
not in the pst file, they must be somewhere else, like maybe on the pop3
server he was using? Set up outlook to get into that account.

 

[J]

DLW, thank you for the reply. The user indicated to me that his POP3 emails
were set to download from the server. I gained access to his POP3 account
from another computer and verified what he said because only the very latest
emails were on the POP3 server (i.e. only brand new emails).

Any other suggestions or help would be great. Thank you. J

 

[J]

DLW, in follow-up to my reply to you from a few minutes ago... I was under
the impression that .pst files are only created upon demand (i.e. when a user
triggers an export of their Outlook data to a .pst). So, I guess part of my
question is whether there is a different type of file, other than a .pst,
that I should be looking for that would house all of the user's downloaded
emails. Thanks again. J

 

[dlw]

OK, they are probably in an ost file, off-line storage. I think these are
tied to an exchange server account, sorry can't be of any more help.

 

[Brian Tillman]

DLW, in follow-up to my reply to you from a few minutes ago... I was
under the impression that .pst files are only created upon demand
(i.e. when a user triggers an export of their Outlook data to a
.pst).

You are operating under a false impression. In the absence of an Exchange
mailbox, all messages in Outlook (as well as all other Outlook data like
contacts, calendar, etc.) are kept in a PST and that PST should still be on
the laptop, probably in the (hidden)
%UserProfile%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook folder for
that person's WIndows login.

 

[J]

Is there anything I need to do other than set the folder view properties to
show hidden files and not hide protected system files? Because, that is what
I had done and only found the .pst dated from a year ago. Thank you for your
input. J

 

[J]

DLW, thank you for your help. J