Outlook Express emails disappeared - can I get them back?

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No avatar asked by (120 points) about Microsoft Office Outlook
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A user opens his Outlook Express 6 (all Windows updates up to date) this morning and finds that his inbox is empty. Approximately 200 old messages that were there yesterday have disappeared. I have checked that the View is set to All Messages, and it is. No rules in existence. New emails arriving are adding to the inbox. Other folders (Sent, Deleted) have the same content as yesterday.

It seems that the files related to the inbox had a problem, or physically got deleted, and Outlook Express 6 just self-recovered by giving the user an inbox with nothing in it.

Is there anything I can do, other than scanning hard disk sectors for text, that may retrieve these lost emails?

1 Answer

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No avatar answered by (309k points)

As I know, the emails in Outlook are stored in a PST or OST file. Therefore, it's simpler to use a recovery application to locate that file. It doesn't matter if you didn't create a backup, since the recovery application looks for information in the clusters.

Download Recuva: https://www.piriform.com/recuva and then use the built-in Wizard to select the partition where Outlook is installed. Tick the Deep Scan option and wait for results. To narrow down the list, input *.ost or *.pst in the filter system.

When you find the files, right click them and choose Restore to. Pick another partition then and confirm the operation. After this, load the OST/PST in Outlook and the emails will be displayed. You can choose to create a backup afterwards.

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