Exchange 5.5 Disappearing Messages

[TechieB]

We have one Exchange server that has a re-occuring and mysterious problem. Over a period of one year and, on three separate occasions, people have lost their inbox messages. I wouldn't believe it, but I witnessed it once. The person exited Outlook, then went back in. When she went back into Outlook 98, her inbox was empty. It's happened two more times since then. The e-mail clients are a mix of Outlook 97, 98 and 2000. The messages are definitely gone.

Does anyone know what could have happened? How can I fix this so that it doesn't happen again.

 

[liammac]

Do any of the users have more then one computer checking their mail?

 

[TechieB]

The most recent occurence of this problem started with the user saying that his screen would freeze whenever he went into Outlook 98. He started going into OWA and used that instead. It could be that he had both OWA and OL98 opened at the same time.

 

[alanmcconachie]

Since this is an old problem you've probably given up all hope of finding these emails now.

But I have had a similar problem happen to me. Most recently just today when 3 people lost the messages in their inbox within 10 mins. All the emails in the Inbox vanished but I found them in an archive Folder.

Only thing I can think is that auto archive decided that all these mails were older that 3 months (the default I've set for archiving) and moved them all. But they all had todays date. The times on the PC's were an hour slow (due to another daylight saving problem I have) but i can't see how that would affect the archive.

If anyone has any idea's I'd be happy to hear them.

 

[david902]

this also might happen if a person connects to a mail server via pop3 and does not have th " leave mail on server"
configuration option selected.