Inbox disappeared

[Denise Wallace]

Hi. I have Outlook 2003. I had lots of messages for about 3 years in my
inbox (I know this was not bright... but have to move on from that now!)
Anyway - all messages from my inbox disappeared a few days ago. I have
Windows XP. I have checked my view, have no filters, ran the inbox repair
tool - all with no success -- my pst fiesize now is 1.2GB (so it was probably
over 2GB before my inbox messages disappeared) ... I don't know what the size
was previously... I got no error messages -- but have been getting lots of
messages for months now that say Outlook has to close and restart...
anyway... sorry this is a long and rambling statement!! Does anyone have any
other suggestions to help me recover my missing messages??

Thanx in advance,

Denise Wallace
Stay at home mom who tempted the fates with her big ole inbox!

 

[K. Orland]

Hi Denise

Outlook 2003 doesn't have the 2 GB limitation on PST size. Did you perhaps
create this PST in an older version of Outlook?

 

[Denise Wallace]

Nope, only had outlook 2003 on this pc ever... and did not transfer the pst
over from any other computer...

 

[M]

Hi. I have Outlook 2003. I had lots of messages for about 3 years in my
inbox (I know this was not bright... but have to move on from that now!)
Anyway - all messages from my inbox disappeared a few days ago. I have
Windows XP. I have checked my view, have no filters, ran the inbox repair
tool - all with no success -- my pst fiesize now is 1.2GB (so it was probably
over 2GB before my inbox messages disappeared) ... I don't know what the size
was previously... I got no error messages -- but have been getting lots of
messages for months now that say Outlook has to close and restart...
anyway... sorry this is a long and rambling statement!! Does anyone have any
other suggestions to help me recover my missing messages??

Thanx in advance,

Denise Wallace
Stay at home mom who tempted the fates with her big ole inbox!

Have you been backing up your .pst file regularly? If not, now you know
that back up is a computer user's best friend. I back mine up at the end
of every day and have a folder with seven folders in it on my external
hard drive, each for a different day of the week.

Having said that, are you sure you haven't set the view to hide read
messages?

M

 

[Denise Wallace]

No, I did not make backups - see note about tempting the fates.... I double
checked the view again -- all messages displayed... No filter set, No
archiving set, and I have backed up my pst file now --- a day late and a
dollar short....

Thanx for the replies!

Denise

 

[K. Orland]

If you've been getting messages for months saying Outlook has to close and
restart, did you investigate at all? Is that the extent of the error message?
Are there any other error messages and/or numbers? Have you checked the
Application Event Viewer for any Office or Outlook-related errors?

 

[K. Orland]

Also, when you scanned the PST for errors did you first close Outlook? When
you ran it, did it find errors? Did you run it again until no errors were
found?

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]]

Nope, only had outlook 2003 on this pc ever... and did not transfer the pst
over from any other computer...

If you right-click the root of your PST in Outlook, choose Properties, click
Advanced, exactly what is shown in the "Format" field?