Kenneth said:
Same story... Advanced Find doesn't find it either.
Then the item is no longer in the message store, or it is hidden
(Outlook is designed not to show it).
- A deleted item simply gets moved to the Deleted Items folder. Since
it is still in a folder, "delete" only *moved* the item, not delete it.
- Permanently deleting an item (by deleting from Deleted Items folder
or using Shift+Del on the selected item) means that its status changes
to Deleted. Outlook will not display delete-marked items. They are
still in the message store but you can't get Outlook to show them. You
need to use special utilities to dig into the message store (a daunting
task) to get at the delete-marked items. Once the message store is
compacted, the delete-marked items are physically purged from the
message store.
- When using Advanced Find, you need to select the root folder in the
message store (the topmost branch in the folder tree) to start your
search. That will include searching the root folder (typically
labelled "Outlook Today"). The view in Outlook on this root folder
will not show any items stored there, but Advanced Find can find them
there *if* you start the search from the root folder. Once found in
Advanced Find, you can select and move the item out of the root folder
where they are hidden.
If you used Advanced Find correctly (starting from the root folder of
the message store) and didn't find the item, it has been permanently
deleted. You could use tools like OutlookSpy or Microsoft's Exchange
Viewer (forget it's name right now) to dig inside the message store to
change the status of the otherwise hidden item. Googling will probably
show up several utilities to retrieve deleted items in the message
store but I don't know of any free ones (than those I mentioned
although OutlookSpy is not freeware but a fully functional trial
version).
If Google Desktop found the item, maybe you dragged it into the root
folder of the message store where Outlook will not show those items but
its Advanced Find will. Or you drag it outside of Outlook to create an
..msg file (but, I thought, that just made a copy of the item). Never
bothered with file indexers but it seems odd that a program tells you
that it found a file or item but won't show you were it is. Of course,
if it merely found the string you searched on in the .pst file then it
is telling you the .pst file is where the string is, and that probably
means you moved the item into the root folder of the message store or
you permanently deleted it (but haven't yet compacted the message
store). Google Desktop finding the string in the .pst file is
worthless to you because that doesn't make Outlook change how it
handles displaying that item. In Outlook and Outlook Express, all
e-mails for a message store are stored inside the same .pst file,
unlike some other e-mail clients that store each item in its own file,
like Windows Live Mail.
So why not restore the .pst file from your regular backups? Uh huh,
yep, another "deer caught in headlights" stare from a user not
realizing they need to backup their host until too late. If you don't
do backups, you deem your data as worthless or reproducible.
