Any way of retrieving an email?

Chindato

Hello folks,

I'm running MS Outlook on Windows XP. A while back, Outlook ate all the emails in my Inbox. It's worked perfectly well ever since, so forgot about it. However, one of the swallowed emails has since become incredibly important - a friend has a work dispute, and the email in question would prove she's telling the truth.

Is there any hope of retrieving the email, do ye think? I have the sender's email address, and there would only be one or two emails from that person altogether.

Thanks in advance for any ideas you might be able to give me.
Chindato

flanree

Depending on the type of email storage you have try installing Google Desktop. You will then have a google desktop search inside Outlook. This might find cached messages not visible in your Inbox.

Chindato

Thanks Flanree,
Tried it, no luck.
Any other things I could try? Would a data recovery person be able to do anything?

Poco90

I'm not sure what you mean by "ate my emails"

Did you loose all of your emails or only a certain few?

Mountjoy Mugger

Auto archiving isn't enabled perchance?

If so, do a quick search for *.pst on your hard drive.

Chindato

Poco90, I mean I opened Outlook one day and there was nothing in my Inbox. Does that give you any ideas?

Mountjoy Mugger wrote: »

Auto archiving isn't enabled perchance?

If so, do a quick search for *.pst on your hard drive.

Thanks Mountjoy Mugger. I've done that. It found 9 .pst files. It won't let me open anything though. I'm asked to select a program from a list, but Outlook isn't one of the choices. Should I open them in word?

Thanks for the help guys. I'd really like to help this pal out - she's having a dreadful time at work

spurious

Read these and see if they are any help:
http://www.tech-faq.com/repair-pst.shtml
http://www.zdnet.com.au/insight/soa/Corrupt-the-PST-file-to-recover-Outlook-e-mail
http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-1052339.html

BrokenArrows

what email account are you using.

For instance i use gmail and outlook together. Even though i download to my outlook gmail always keeps an online copy aswell. maybe your email provider keeps an online copy too?

Poco90

Chindato,
That sounds like your PST file was moved or deleted. As an earlier poster mentioned you should do a search on all of you hard drive(s) for *.pst. Hopefully your search results will bring up a least two files, the one you are urrently using for your outlook and the one that was moved. If you do find the other pst file, from outlook goto file open and open data file. Hope this helps.
Poco

Poco90

Sorry Chindato,
I didn't see the bottom half of your post about finding the 9 pst files. Did you try opening them from outlook itself ? File>Open>Outlook Data File.
Poco

Chindato

Poco90 wrote: »

Did you try opening them from outlook itself ? File>Open>Outlook Data File.
Poco

Thanks guys for the suggestions. I have opened all the *.pst files. None have the email I'm looking for. Some are copies which were generated during a previous attempt by another friend to restore the inbox for me- no success.

My email account is with Eircom. I rang customer support and they said that once I download a message to my inbox it's deleted from their server, so no help there.

I'll have a look at those articles and see if I can understand em enough to get another idea.

Thanks again guys, I really appreciate the help
Chindato

Poco90

This is probably no use to you but just in case it is, Microsoft have a tool to recover mails from courrupt PST files. If one of your PST files is corrupt maybe you will have some luck with the tool. Be warned, back up your PST files before using the tool.
Poco

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/287497

mark renton

the email will have been "eaten" :eek: by outlook (usually an additional extra) from local pst - what email server are you using???