Outlook 2003 Deleted Inbox E-Mails!!!!!

[superscrewup]

HELP! EMERGENCY! My business is at risk!

I get hundreds of customer e-mails with Outlook, and Outlook 2003 deleted all of my inbox items, because it was at its Maximum Capacity. No warning message, nothing! It just downloaded everything, and completely garbled it into nothing!!! I really need someone to help me, isn't there a backup file or something where these items go? It certainly wasn't in my Deleted Items folder. I even cleaned up Outlook to clear some space. I hate microsoft. Someone help

[DavidR]

Don't hate MS for poor system security/backup strategy.

If you don't want to lose it you should back it up. Don't use the inbox for general storage, it is the most vulnerable to corruption. My inbox has 0 emails in it, once dealt with they are moved to a more appropriate folder.

You may be able to recover some of the data. First find where Outlook stores the database files .PST (I think, I don't use Outlook) and you will probably find that there are two inbox's with slightly differing names (if it is anything like OE).

Create a new Outlook folder and select File Import and there should be some way to import an email database (.PST file, as I said I'm not an Outlok user, so I can't be of more help). Using the browse... function select the old (deleted) inbox.

I hope that gets you on your way and having learnt a valuable lesson, back it up or lose it, you shouldn't experience this problem again.

[DukeNukem]

Hello!

C:\Documents and Settings\Tango\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\archive.pst

Can you check that location for the archive.pst and open it.

My user name is Tango, so pretend your username is there instead  

Sometimes outlook will archive old messages and move them out of the inbox.

To open it use outlook,

file>open>outlook data file

[Lisandro]

superscrewup, why did you post here in avast forum?
Do you use avast?

Maybe the Moderators could move this into General board.
If you had a backup... it will be easier...
Can you search your computer for *.dbx files and see what you get?

[DavidR]

*.dbx files are for Outlook Express, not Outlook (*.pst)

[S.Z.Craftec]

Yeah, he needs to find his old PST file. If he didn't make any archive file or backup of his original PST file, it could be a problem.

Btw, I've never heard that Outlook 2003 erases e-mails withouy any notification warnings. That's absolutely not true. And, what's your Maximum capacity ? It's up to you how many e-mails you'll store in your Inbox. If your PST file is located on your local HD, your inbox size is limited just by your HD capacity, nothing else. On the other hand, if your PST file location is somewhere on the server, then your Inbox size is limited just by your available space on the server.

I installed MS Office 2003 for one of the largest North America's steel company. More than 40 people in offices uses Outlook 2003. They receive more than 100 e-mails each day... and best of all, they keep those e-mails... Also, they send same amount of e-mails from their computer. They keep all those sent and deleted items. Their PST files are located on the server, under each user's personal folder. If Outlook 2003 erases those e-mails by itself, I'm sure those people would scream like crazy... well, it could be that mailbox size is limited by some number that represents physical size of PST file, but still I don't believe Outlook would erase anything before it notifies the user or "ask" him what he wants to do if mailbox ran out of free space...

Microsoft doesn't have to do anything with this, so I wouldn't blame Microsoft !

Are you sure, you didn't put checkmark under SHOW UNREAD E-mails ONLY ?

[flaxthejute]

I think you'll find that an outlook mailbox is limited to just over 1.8GB. See http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2003/2003-08-28.htm#1 this langalist for details/suggestions.

Good luck

Flax

[S.Z.Craftec]

Also, there is this part of the text:

No matter what email client you're using, why not take a look at your mail files now, and save or export some older messages if your mailboxes are getting unwieldy? Email problems like this are always easier to prevent than to recover from!

I will never understand why people keep all those hundreds and hundreds of messages in their inbox. If some message is very important to you, why not save it as e-mail somewhere on your hard drive, and that way, you'll aslo have backup. Exporting of PST is always welcome, but some people still think that inbox is bottomless hole... like always, we should be more careful about everything, not just think that computers will do everything for us...

[inthewildteam]

Composing and receiving emails in html format is hugely wastefull of disk and server space, not to mention transmission and network loads.

Try just sending/receiving plain text instead.

[S.Z.Craftec]

Right to the point inthewildteam... you're completely right...

But, as Technical already said:

superscrewup, why did you post here in avast forum?
Do you use avast?

I really don't see a reason for posting this in these forums. It should be somewhere in Microsoft newsgroups, Outlook/Office 2003 related forums... or at least in avast! Off-Topic forums... His question totaly doesn't have anything to do with avast!

[inthewildteam]

@ S.Z.C.

If I was running a business, I'd make sure I only accepted plain text emails.  If I was a mod i'd probably have posted ..........

rtfm  

[S.Z.Craftec]

Yeah, running business and not making backups... doesn't sound too professional to me...  <joking mode off>

No, really... everyone should make backups on regular basis, especially people who runs some business... there is too much to loose if we are not careful enough.

Cheers !

[inthewildteam]

@ S.Z.C.  no arguements about your last post here, fully agree!  (Can't post a clap hands smilie)

[Lisandro]

Why do some users come here, ask things and never come back?  

[DavidR]

Why do some users come here, ask things and never come back?  

Having gained the information or he thinks we are ganging up on him (were not, only trying to help) so he has gone.

In any case I don't think we should waste any further time until we get further comment or feedback from superscrewup.