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Emails disappear from user's Outlook and I think from the Imap

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conrail

Technical User
Sep 30, 2002
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MS 5.5 exchange sp3. Users are losing emails without deleting they just disappear. Sometimes right away but mostly after 5 or 10 minutes. Could it be hard drive space? Any Ideas? Thanks
 
One major point that I caught from your first entry was that your Exchange server is running with SP3. You should really update your Exchange server to Exchange SP4 before you worry about the email being magically moved. I agree with the majority of the responses in that this is usually caused by the Outlook client configuration, Archive settings on each folder, delivery location, rules, etc.

 
I know this will not answer the question at hand, but since this has burned me in the past, I thought I would post it so anyone reading this thread would at least see it. I had a case once where emails were "disappearing". It turned out my main login server was not keeping time propperly. As a result, all the workstations on that site where getting the date set back to 2000/01/01. Since the clients sort there mail by date, all new messages were being time stamped 2000/01/01 and were dropping to the bottom of the list. Once the clock on the server was fixed, everything went back to normal. (BTW it took me a few hours to find this because I wasn't looking for the obvious)
 
Just to recap: Exchange server 5.5 sp3 on NT4 sp6. IMAP for every box. I have outlook express 6 on the floor and OUTLOOK for the back office. I have checked the obvious local settings for OUTLOOK and all seems ok. However I will make one last thorough round. With express though I am not sure what to look for since it is limited compared to OUTLOOK but seems simple enough.

Again the problem with examples in OUTLOOK: Three email received on OUTLOOK two stay one shows for a moment and disappears; One or nine emails sent, forwarded, cc, never make it to the recipient's OUTLOOK inbox; One email received-it is opened and disappears; At a specific time of day one email is recived and it has to be opened within a 5 to 10 min period to read it and that will disappear regardless if it is opened or not; outlook express I guess pretty much the same, some emails just disappear and these are consistant mailings each day that have important information.

Just to add something on the wayside.When I receive an email from a vendor of mine I never get his attachment and sometime the body text of the message. I have him send it to alternative emails that I have outside of this server and resend it to my original email (this server) where I did not get the attachment and I do get the attachment. I hope that made sense.

Thanks to all for braining it has really helped and I am enjoying this thread.

The server time is fine.

I have not used the patches or upgrades for exchange sp3 yet. As I look at upgrading to sp4 it frightens me because it looks as though there are about a hundred patches and upgrades for problems with sp4. I think I would have preferred staying with sp2.

Auto archive, local filters, and pop3 at home are not an issue for sure.

PST folder is the default and is where all the mail is delivered.

How do I recover and read pst outside of outlook?
Hope I covered this better in this post.

 
I think I've figured this one out. I had the same issue here. Mail would "disappear" after being read. However, this only happened in the inbox. After a few forums and the "ever helpful" MS online support, I realized the problem...

The view setting for that particular folder was set to unread items only, changed it to messages (this is on Outlook 2002 SP3) and... voila! The messages re-appeared as if by magic.

Try it out, in Outlook 2002, go to view->current view and verify what option is checked. Ensure that the Messages option is checked in order to view all read and unread messages. I believe the options are similar in earlier versions as well.

Only thing I'm not clear on is how this option may get changed without user intervention.

Thanks for making me think...
 
I must say this problem is all too familiar. I am experiencing a similar issue, and have no solution yet.

The problem is that users can not see the messages in their inbox. When emails arrive (the folder indicated new emails arriving and the number keeps going up) they just don't appear in the inbox. All filters are off and views are correct. Autoarchive is not an issue either. Additionally, the sent mail, and deleted mail folders also contain "invisible" emails.

I'm on MS 5.5 and have three users. One user has no problem, the other two have this same problem.

When we change the delivery to a personal folder, the emails are visible in the personal inbox folder. When we copy the inbox/deleted/sent mail to a personal folder, we can see all emails correctly. When we sync the inbox with a PPC, the emails are visible in the PPC outlook.

Everything seems to be working fine, except we can't see the emails in those folders. We also use public folders that all users can see fine.

This problem occurred after we performed Office Updates.
 
Actually sounds like a slightly different issue jstenger.

One thing I think you can be almost 100% certain of is that yours is a client side issue.

What version of Outlook are your users running?
 
If you are using your anti-virus to scan your exchange server, stop.
Check with your anti-virus provider, mine is Symantec, and there is an update/upgrade that will resolve this issue.
Anti-Virus is causing the problem...
 
That would be a curious one, AV makes emails invisible to client? I'd like to hear more about that. I don't even know what it could do to an email that would do that and would be curious to read more if you have a link.

Meanwhile (unless you have another level of protection) I might live with the problem a little longer rather that stop scanning.
 
This is the artical that helped me resolve my issue. Does not mention emails vanishing directly but it does mention calender items disappearing and anti virus software. I followed symantec's advice here and it solved my vanishing emails issue.

Before doing this I could literally watch an email arrive in my inbox and vanish within a split second.



 
Well yes you should never have AV software scanning the Exchange system directories and I can see how that would make Items disappear permanently.

But from what has been said so far this is a different issue because the items are not really gone, can see them in the Folder item count and can get them back by eporting the folder. Not removed just invisible to the client.
 
We are using Outlook 2000 on the clients. As I mentioned, this just happened after our Office update yesterday.

You are correct about the emails not be gone, per se. Rather, they are just invisible.

I am going to explore the Anti-virus point you made. Thanks for your help so far!
 
One of my clients had the same issue this morning. I checked her rules and there were none set.

I set up a .pst file for her and set the exchange server to send all emails to the .pst file. All of the emails she had lost immediately appeared.
 
I have just got a similar issue. I have just swapped a remote users laptop (due to battery issues), part of swap included the transfer the user's Outlook (2000) PST file.

Since then, he cannot "see" any emails in his inbox, yet he can see the messages being downloaded. Switching "autopreview" on shows the messages, so they are there but just invisible.

The filter settings have been checked and reported as off, similarly there no rules are in operation.

I have 6 other remote users with the same set up (hardware, software, AV signature version, etc) none of whom have this problem.

Question - Could this be due to a corruption of the PST file? If so is there anything that could be used to repair the file.

Thanks
David [3eyes]
 
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