Outlook 2003 - Emails "Disappear" - VERY WEIRD

[maximusimo]

HI,

I have a user using Outlook 2003. he has an Exchange account in this as well as an AOL one. One day he will have a whole host of emails, in both accounts but primarily the AOL one, and the next day there may be only one or two there in total. This happens randomly and I cannot figure out how it is happening. Auto Archive isn't doing it, anyone have any ideas?

all help much appreciated,

Max.

 

[cmeagan656]

Does he have any filters on? i.e. is the view set for "unread messages only" or "last seven days". Or does he have any rules?

Cheers.

 

[maximusimo]

No filters on and the view settings are fine. No rules on at all either

 

[Craino]

Is he checking (and deleting) E-mails from another client - say a web browser?

 

[maximusimo]

No he aint but even if he were this wouldnt account for the emails 'disappearing' from Outlook

 

[maximusimo]

This has happened again today - emails from two days ago have mysteriously disappeared, its getting very frustrating to say the least. The account is an AOL IMAP account

 

[Craino]

I know you say it can't happen, but I'd check to see if the E-Mails disappearing were deleted via an AOL client over the weekend. This can absolutely happen. Not saying it is the problem, but it is something to check.

 

[maximusimo]

Unfortunately none were deleted via an AOL client, checked this out. I have jsut created a new profile within Outlook with only the AOL account available and gonna see if this makes any difference. Prob not the way to go long term as the user will not be able to "see" their Exchange account at the same time but it may help determine where the "fault" lies. Would this be a good direction to take?

 

[Craino]

In situations like this, I say try anything. You never know what you might stumble across.

Just a thought - have you looked at the add-in / com manager to see if maybe something unusual got installed? (Tools / Options / Other / Advanced Options.

 

[cmeagan656]

Have you checked his auto archive settings?

Cheers.

 

[maximusimo]

Yeah i checked the auto archive settings and actually turned auto archive off

 

[Craino]

Just another thought - you can turn auto-archive off globally, but still set up archiving on a particular folder. Have you checked the archive properties of the folder that is behaving badly?

 

[blur2u]

Oh, please tell me you figured this out! I have had this problem for the past 6 months. I have tried everything. It only happens on my AOL IMAP account. I also have a POP3 account on my Outlook and never have the problem. Unfortunately my IMAP is my work email so losing them is a big problem. I currently try and move mine to a newly created folder and they seem to stay there...but anything in the inbox seems to disappear after a few days, no matter if it has been read or not.

Hopefully someone will have answer for this!

 

[maximusimo]

Hey,

unfortunately i am still to find a definitive answer to solve this problem. The exact same is happening in regards to just 'stuff' in the inbox disappearing. I am yet to solve it but will post here once, if i ever, do. Could you do the same if you find and solution?

 

[maximusimo]

OK,

the one thing that i can figure out is this:

the client used to use AOL as his ISP. Now, he switched over to another ISP although is still allowed access to his AOL email. The only thing i can figure out is that AOL clear out mails on these types of accounts on their servers every so often, possibly 7 days, and because of this the emails disappear. This is because IMAP is different from POP3 in the way that with POP3 will download the emails to your computer whereas with IMAP they actually stay on the server and so when the server is cleared so to are the emails. The best thing would be to create a folder within Outlook you can copy all emails to. Even create a rule that moves them there either before or after reading them. This is what i intend to do and will post my results here. I hope this is clear and if anyone knows anything to the contrary please let us know via this post.

 

[blur2u]

OK, I think I might have taken care of this. I made a change in my settings and I haven't lost an email in over a week, which is rare. Here is what I found after a LOT of research:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HP010400921033.aspx

scroll down until you see "missing messages, files, or rules" then under that "messages disappearing from inbox" click on that link and it will open up to paragraphs, the second one has to do with IMAP.

Click on the link within the paragraph that says "downloading the entire message" and finally click on the link that says "download all items in a folder" and follow those instructions. It has worked for me! Good luck, and I hope this wasn't too confusing!!

 

[maximusimo]

Hi blur2u,

your emails still staying put or still disappearing? Mine were going good for the past week and a bit but today disappeared again!!!

 

[jsaumer]

I am having the same exact issue.

However, it has to do with one user getting their email directly off of our exchange server.

I have recreated the user's mail profile, and we'll see if that helps.

If anyone has any more helpful info, I will greatly appreciate it.

 

[PabloArriola]

Hello. I joined the forum to attempt to help with this issue. Hopefully I can:

NOTE: This applies to Outlook (specifically tested on Outlook 2003), NOT Outlook Express. Also, you MUST be using Outlook on the same machine every time.

There are at least FOUR issues combining to cause your "Random" disappearance. Postings to your message are touching on some of it.

1)AOL auto-deletes messages after a few days... read or not!

2)Outlook will read messages but not store them locally UNLESS you configure it to do so.

3)Outlook will auto-archive messages and delete them (well actually move them).

4)Outlook will store messages (and auto-archive them) to a file specific to the USER PROFILE being used. ALWAYS USE THE SAME USER PROFILE ON THE SAME MACHINE.

****

THE GOOD NEWS is that if you solve #2, chances are you can retrieve even "disappeared" messages.

You cannot do anything about #1. AOL ALWAYS auto-deletes messages from your "New", "Old" or "Sent" tabs. There's nothing you can do about it, except add your name to everyone else that has asked them to change it.

In the meantime...

PICK ONE PROGRAM NOW. DO NOT USE BOTH AOL AND OUTLOOK, AT LEAST UNTIL YOU ISOLATE THE PROBLEM.

*** The MOST important thing you can do is to solve #2. Set your INBOX to "Download Complete Items Including Attachments" (Outlook: Tools > Send/Receive > Send/Receive Settings > Define Send/Receive Groups > Edit > INBOX > Download Complete Items Including Attachments > [OK] > [Close]). If you download only headers, you will have a similar problem... You will see the message in the list, but will not be able to open it. THIS WILL BE THE CASE FOR ANY IMAP MESSAGES.

(As an alternative, you can MOVE all of your inbox messages to a folder under your "Saved" AOL folders. Ironically, AOL will save user-created folders on the server indefinitely. This might be the easiest way to solve your problem without really determining what your problem was and also make them available to any Windows User Profile on any machine...maybe.)

Ignoring the parenthesis, if you perform the instructions above, and download as soon as you open Outlook (if you are not sure, just press <F9> to download), you will have A COPY of your AOL "New" and "Old" Messages in your Outlook Inbox even if you delete them from either program (Outlook "marks" them for deletion but does not delete them from the local file).

If you you have done this already and still have the problem, make sure you do the following TWO things: In your Advanced Tool Bar "Views drop-down" make sure you select IMAP Messages. This will show "deleted" messages with a "strikethrough" the list entry. If that is the case, righ-click on the deleted message entry and click on "undelete".

If you do not see the entry and it has "disappeared" after being downloaded to the local file, it means your Outlook "auto-archive" has kicked in and moved your message. Not to panic, you can open your auto-archive .PST file and access all your "disappeared" messages. To find your auto-archive file, you can see the auto-archive settings (global and specific to that folder) or do it the easy way by going to your Windows Explorer Star Menu > Search > For files or folders ... and search for files named *.PST in your whole drive.

I hope this helps. Please let me know.

Pablo Arriola
Pablo@Arriola.org

 

[cresbydotcom]

I recently loaded Office 2003 and Outlook has not saved my sent items since.

Try as I might there does not seem to be a switch or control that is appropriate and the original Outlook (2000) never gave this problem.

All other functions appear to work including a little script I cribbed from these pages. It is running under Win98 - because I check my website locally. My target audience are not the most geeky crowd.

Any ideas on switches for saving send items? Help is no help.