[frankstr]

Yesterday I accidently did emptie the deleted items folder of outlook 2002.

I don't have an exchange server.

How can I retrieve these items and folders?



Frank

[mphenterprises]

Hi Frankstr and welcome to PCWorld. :-)




Since this Discussion is in relation to deleted emails, I have moved this Discussion from the Windows Community in the Web Browsing & Email Community. Okay, this is not as cut and dry as one may think. First the bad news. Since you are not under an exchange server, there is no way to Recover Deleted Emails from within Outlook.

The possibly good news. Since you use Outlook for your email server, your emails have to come from some other source. If you elected to keep a copy of the forwarded email in the original email source (Gmail, Hotmail, paid email service such as GoDaddy), then all you have to do is go to that source and recover the original emails. If you elected not to keep a copy in the original email source, well...

Now, for the somewhat good, but expensive news. Files are not really deleted from a hard drive until another piece of data overwrites the portion of the section in which the deleted file resides. Once this happens, then there is no way to recover anything. Since emails are still data, and since you notice this yesterday, you still have a chance, albeit it slim, of recovering those emails.

There are companies that claim they can recover any deleted item from a hard drive. The unfortunate part is that:

- there is no guarantee of recovery

- the cost of such a service could reach into the hundreds, possibly upwards of $400-$500

I personally, do not recommend any third party service because they prey on individuals just like yourself who are in an emergency situation and have no back up solution. However, the one application that has been brought up time and time again as a possible solution, at a reasonable price is RecoverSoft's Data Rescue. There is a free demo that will show you whether or not a recovery process would be successful. How successful is another story. If the recover process is deemed feasible, you would have to buy the full version for $99.

Hindsight is 20/20. In the future, I would strongly recommend creating a back up copy of all your files, including your email file. To do this, simply make a copy of the Personal Folder File. Without going into a long process, follow these steps to export a copy of the file to your hard drive:

- In Outlook, click File -> Import and Export...

- Select Export to a file

- Select Personal Folder File

- On the next screen, make sure you highlight the "Personal Folders" section and put a check box next to the words, "Include subfolders"

- Click Next>

- On the next screen, click Browse and select a location in which you want to save the file. I would recommend either an external drive or a floppy disk

- Click Next>

- The next screen will prompt you to create a password...if necessary.

Once you click OK, the backup process will start.

[smax013]

I am not sure if Data Rescue or other such programs will help in this case or not. Outlook does NOT store individual email messages as individual files. It stores every thing in one file (unless you have archived some stuff using the auto-archive function or manual archived stuff). That file is typically named "Outlook.pst" and is typically in the program's folder so where. Data Rescue is designed to recovery files from hard drives, NOT recovery stuff from IN files.



You might try something like this. It supposedly will recover email messages from PST files from Outlook. I don't know how well it works or if it works, but found it using a Google search.