some of my sub-folders just disappeared

[JerseyGirl]

I get a lot of email, as i support multiple projects, and set up separate
offline PST folders for each project. Each folder has 3-4 sub-folders so i
can organize my mail. In the past i've had up to 20 PST files, but currently
have less than 10 open, in addition to the primary mailbox.

Yesterday, i had an issue with the mailbox file, and my support guy closed
two of my offline folders. I was watching, nothing was deleted, he simply
closed the files. This morning, i added those folders back to my folder list
(open folders). The first sub-folder is there and the default ones (inbox,
sent, delete), but anything past the first added sub-folder is missing.
Nothing was deleted.

Now here's more strangeness. The same thing happened in two other PST files
that were not closed out. Only the first sub-folder is present, the other
ones are gone. And messages for the past 3 months is not in the one folder
that is left, but older messages are still there.

I read this board and looked for + signs and expanded all possible folders.
They are not moved. I launched Outlook with the \Cleanviews switch. Nothing
new showed up. I looked in every deleted folder, no luck. And no, i do not
have current enough backup files to restore from.

Where could these folders, from multiple offline PST files, have gone? I
pray they are somewhere! I've been storing critical info for my projects so
they'd be safe from corruption of my primary mailbox, which happened! Can
anyone help me?

 

[JerseyGirl]

Note: I am running Outlook 2003, current on all patches, under Windows XP.

 

[JerseyGirl]

Note: I am running Outlook 2003, under Windows XP and all patches, etc are
current.

 

[LOS]

I just had a similar thing happen. A number of my subfolders, while still
remaining displayed, are missing all of the emails that were in there. Please
let me know if you hear of or find a solution.

 

[Brian Tillman]

I just had a similar thing happen. A number of my subfolders, while
still remaining displayed, are missing all of the emails that were in
there. Please let me know if you hear of or find a solution.

Do you have AutoArchive enabled?

 

[JerseyGirl]

No, i do not have auto-archive enabled. I prefer to clean out my old mail
manually to sort messages i want to retain into other folders. Which makes it
more distressing that the other folders now seem to be gone.

 

[Brian Tillman]

No, i do not have auto-archive enabled. I prefer to clean out my old
mail manually to sort messages i want to retain into other folders.
Which makes it more distressing that the other folders now seem to be
gone.

Outlook will never delete anything on its own. It must be TOLD to delete
things. Any add-ins? Do you sync with a PDA or other device? Have you
tried resetting your views? Have you run the Inbox Repair Tool on your PST
(if you use one)? Exactly what have you done in an attempt to fix the
problem? You do keep regular backups, don't you? You can always recover
your data from the backup.

 

[ddavis78]

I too am having problems with saved emails disappearing. I saved quite a few
emails in a folder but everything older than day before yesterday have just
disappeared. Auto archive is on but not to delete anything. I tried finding
the auto archive folder but was not able to. I haven't DONE anything because
I have no idea WHAT to do to find these emails! I have done nothing different
in the past few days and yet these items have just vanished. Some of this is
very important information and I am very upset that it may be gone forever.

I went to the Microsoft Office site but it costs about $50 for them to
answer any of my questions. That's pretty bad when the stupid program cost me
$400 as it is! I am VERY disappointed in this system.

I hope someone can direct me to some answers. I am afraid to close my
outlook as the info may disappear forever!

 

[Brian Tillman]

I too am having problems with saved emails disappearing. I saved
quite a few emails in a folder but everything older than day before
yesterday have just disappeared. Auto archive is on but not to delete
anything. I tried finding the auto archive folder but was not able
to. I haven't DONE anything because I have no idea WHAT to do to find
these emails!

Look in the Archive PST. SInce you say autoarchive is on, the auoarchive
settings contain the archive PST's name. Open that PST in Outlook with
File>Open>Outlook Data File.

 

[ddavis78]

I did check that out but it seems to be encrypted or something. I can't read
what it says. I am at a loss. Thought I was doing well backing up onto an
external hard drive, but what it shows I am not able to figure out.

 

[Brian Tillman]

I did check that out but it seems to be encrypted or something. I
can't read what it says. I am at a loss.

Unlikely that it is encrypted, unless you manually created it that way. Can
you explain more clearly what you see and where? Describe how you opened
the file and what happened at each step of the process.

Thought I was doing well
backing up onto an external hard drive, but what it shows I am not
able to figure out.

Archives and backups are NOT the same thing by any stretch of the
imagination.

 

[ddavis78]

Ok what happened was the other day I opened my Outlook, and went to my
folders (I sell Avon) and clicked on the folder to access some info that I
had saved in that folder (an email). Normally I would have dividers in there
that say today, yesterday, last week, etc. All that was in there was today
and yesterday. Last week etc was not there, nor were the emails that I had
saved in there.

I wasn't sure where they went, so first thing I did was look in the deleted
folder, thinking for some odd reason they may be there. They were not. So I
did a search and didn't find them.

I have Memeo backup, so I accessed that. It brought up some files but they
were strange (odd characters, etc). So that wasn't much help.

I tried to find the archives, knowing that was turned on. It told me it was
in local folders. I couldn't find it.

I should probably mention that I am running Vista and Outlook 2007. Not sure
if that makes any difference or not.

Any emails I found and restored to my desktop that had been deleted do not
appear in my outlook folder, and if I want to save them there I have to
forward them to myself.

I did try to do a system restore to a time before all this happened, but it
did not return the lost files.

I am at a total loss with all of this! Now when I go into my outlook it does
have a last week division (since Sunday or Monday) but none of the missing
emails are there.

This is probably all clear as mud. Sorry I am not able to be more specific.
I do know archives and back up are not the same; I just thought maybe the
backed up files would have what I was looking for.

 

[Brian Tillman]

I tried to find the archives, knowing that was turned on. It told me
it was in local folders. I couldn't find it.

Open WIndows Explorer and enter

%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Outlook

in the Address bar. Click Go. You'll see the archive, if it exists. You
haven't enabled viewing hidden files and folders.

Any emails I found and restored to my desktop that had been deleted
do not appear in my outlook folder, and if I want to save them there
I have to forward them to myself.

Restoring messages or PSTs to your desktop doesn't autiomatically add them
back into Outlook. You must do that yourself. You can drag a .MSG file to
a mail folder in Outlook or you can use File>Open>Outlook Data File to open
a PST in Outlook.

I did try to do a system restore to a time before all this happened,
but it did not return the lost files.

System Restore recovers only system and application files, it doesn't
recover data files.

This is probably all clear as mud. Sorry I am not able to be more
specific. I do know archives and back up are not the same; I just
thought maybe the backed up files would have what I was looking for.

And they may, but you haven't described how you performed the backup and
restore or how you're trying to see the files with enough detail for me to
guess what you're seeing on your PC.

 

[ddavis78]

Ok I tried finding it and all it finds for me are old Thunderbird emails (5
of them) and I haven't used that since last year. There is simply nothing
else there.

I know it is difficult for you to visualize what I am seeing (or not in this
case!). I do appreciate your help attempts.

My backup is an automatic thing (Memeo, and I subscribed to their program so
it all happens automatically since I am NOT skilled in that dept) so I am not
sure how it does what it does. I know I've got to sound really thick headed,
and I apologize for that. It backs up my files but as to how to access them I
am at a loss, so I can't tell you how to do it, and whatever I did manage to
bungle through I have forgotten what steps I took.

I guess I've just lost those files. I don't mean to sound repetitive or
stupid, I just don't know how to figure this stuff out.

The system restore I did a couple days ago, just to see if the files would
return to the program (they didn't, but I didn't have anyone to ask that as I
was attempting to do it), so I restored it back to where it was when I
started.

Anyway, thank you for trying to help me. I guess I am just not "getting it"
enough to follow your directions, and don't know enough about it to fill in
what I am not asking or telling.

 

[Brian Tillman]

Ok I tried finding it and all it finds for me are old Thunderbird
emails (5 of them) and I haven't used that since last year. There is
simply nothing else there.

Thunderbird does not keep its data in the folder whose path I posted.
Again, enable viewing hidden files and folders.

I know it is difficult for you to visualize what I am seeing (or not
in this case!). I do appreciate your help attempts.

Post screen shots to any of the freely-available image hosting services on
the Internet (Picasa, for example) and post links to the images here. Then
we can see what you see.

My backup is an automatic thing (Memeo, and I subscribed to their
program so it all happens automatically since I am NOT skilled in
that dept) so I am not sure how it does what it does.

Read the documentation that came with it. A backup program is worthless if
you cannot restore the backup.

The system restore I did a couple days ago, just to see if the files
would return to the program (they didn't, but I didn't have anyone to
ask that as I was attempting to do it), so I restored it back to
where it was when I started.

System restore points do not include application data. Using one won't
restore any data.

 

[ddavis78]

Ok, I figured out how to show hidden folders. It now shows me my archive
folder in my list of folders. It is empty. Go figure! Guess that would be why
I could not find anything.

I will have my son come by and show me how to access the backup program.

Not sure how to do a screen shot as I've never done it before and would not
have a clue how to do it.

Thank you again for all your help.

 

[Tre]

Hey,
The same thing happened to me this morning. Funny thing is, when I do an advanced search of my folder, the emails within the subfolders show up.

I then copied the email messages into another folder. It's not an ideal solution, but it seems to have saved the emails at least.

Good luck!

 

[Brian Tillman]

The same thing happened to me this morning. Funny thing is, when I
do an advanced search of my folder, the emails within the subfolders
show up.

I then copied the email messages into another folder. It's not an
ideal solution, but it seems to have saved the emails at least.

Then you either have something filtering the view or you're looking in the
wrong PST.

 

[Tracy]

Then you either have something filtering the view or you're looking in the
wrong PST.

I've read through this entire post and have a similar problem I'm hoping one
of you can help me with. My current computer with Outlook 2003 was provided
by a previous employer. Email with the previous company came from an
exchange server. I am no longer working for that company but was allowed to
keep my laptop. I recently started using an email account through my phone
company. I added the email account through tools, email accounts etc. This
worked fine and I had new emails from my bellsouth.net account shown in the
same outlook window with my old emails from my previous employer. Everything
was fine except during send/recieve when the old profile tried to send /
receive emails to the previous employer's exchange server. Since I was no
longer on that network I an error was thrown. The BellSouth email kept
working fine. In an effort to stop this error, I went to tools, email
accounts. In this box, I see an entry for bellsouth and for exchange server.
The exchange server was listed first and bellsouth second. To stop the
error when trying to connect to the exchange server, I selected remove for
the exchange server. Now the inbox that previously had a combination of old
emails (from former employer and current bellsouth emails) disappeared. All
of my sub folders that had old emails remained, everything in the in box
disappeared from the moment I removed the link to the exchange server. In
tools, email account you have to select where you want "new email" delivered
to, this is set to "in box" so any new emails for my bellsouth address are
being delivered to the in box.

I tried the cleanview command and it didn't work. I can't find a archieve
file for these emails. Any suggestions?

 

[Tracy]

To continue. I used advance search and cannot find any emails delivered in
the previous month. They all just disappeard. The only emails that I have
were in personal sub folders but no emails that were in the in box at the
time I removed the link to the exchange server are present.