Contacts and some emails have disappeared from outlook 2007

[evilsatan]

I am doing a job for a company who are running an SBS2003 server with Microsoft exchange. I hate exchange and am hopefully migrating it to a cloud based solution through backspace but for now I am having a problem.One user has lost all of his contacts and a couple of his mail folders are empty when there had been emails in there. He has not archived anything, the archive.pst is empty.Any idea on where to go from here? I will, as a last resort, delete the exchange account and set it up again but I am not sure if his folder structure and read/unread status is stored on the exchange server so don't want to have a flood of all his emails in the inbox all unread as it will cause too much work filing them.Any advice appreciated, my outlook exchange experience is not great so I am struggling to find more routes of troubleshooting.Cheers

[tombott]

Exchange and Outlook are a total pile of shit, and anybody who tells you otherwise is a total cock muncher.
That aside:

Is the server being backed up?
Are any limits set on mailbox size?

[evilsatan]

I am waiting to hear from the company manager as to whether there are backups, I only took over the administrator role a fortnight ago so am looking to meet their immediate demands then migrate them to google mail for business or, more likely, rackspace. I will then setup the cloud based apps too.I will investigate if there are any size limitations now. I am currently setting up the same exchange account to a new PC I have built for them but so far it looks like there are no contacts and the same mail folders are empty.Not sure how it has happened but looks like the mail from these few folders and contacts have been deleted altogether from the exchange server so I hope they have backups in place.

[evilsatan]

Just logged onto the server to look for backups, they are running symantec backup exec and when I launched that there was a huge list of failed backups. Not sure if that meant an error was encountered or if the backup failed entirely. They are using tapes for backup but they are not labelled so I need to wait to hear back from the manager to see how old they are!

[tombott]

Do you know when the email and contacts mysteriously disappeared? I say mysteriously as it's much more likely the user deleted them.

[matthewy2]

Has he logged onto another machine. they could be cached on somebody elses computer

[evilsatan]

Apparently it was 6th June, the PC went funny and some emails did not come through. Ever since he has noticed more is missing. He has his own machine and the exchange is only set up to his outlook so couldn't be cached elsewhere. His exchange is set to cached so he could use outlook even when offline.Guess it's one of those things, were it a single location then I would agree he could have done it but several random locations are empty where others are fine. Searching all mail does not find the missing emails.

[Over Carl]

I was also going to suggest post5&6 first - if all the items are on one computer only then outlook has been misconfigured on that pc and the mailstore for that user will be on that pc rather than the server.

I notice the more interesting thing in your last response about stuff being missing at some locations - I take it roaming profiles aren't being used? If you set him up on a pc he hasn't used before does the missing stuff come through? If it does, problem will be with the pc(s). If it doesn't I would suggest you go to a pc with all the info and copy the two outlook folders in c:\documents and setting\username\application data\microsoft\ c:\documents and setting\username\local settings\application data\microsoft\ (docs and settings obviously is users in vista/7).

Then set the guy up on a fresh pc and let inbox sync. Then remove network cable and reboot and logon as admin. Copy the *.ost file from the backup over the one created on the new pc. Then log out and log in as user and open outlook. Export the info into a pst then import on a correctly working computer. Once this is done I always reboot and logon as admin and delete the user profile just created as I haven't got a clue about what would happen if exchange tried to sync with this out of sync ost.

You can get tools to recover ost's but in my experience they are shit while this method works perfectly (providing you do have all the info you want in the .ost)

[evilsatan]

I tried his exchange account on a fresh outlook and exactly the same stuff was missing which indicates the server doesn't have the stuff either Annoying, but if their backup system works perhaps I can retrieve something.

On a positive note I spoke to the manager and he agrees we need to migrate from exchange to rackspace or other cloud solutions. Hopefully we can upgrade the 2003 SBS from tape backup to cloud too.

[sirdave]

Obvious one but have you searched his machine for any pst files?

Users are generally twats and there's nothing stopping them creating one on there local machine, all contacts could have been in the pst etc etc might be worth searching and also running some file recovery software on it see if it finds a pst that was deleted?

Didn't Outlook 2003 used to prompt you to archive by default? If so its on the local machine somewhere also in terms of contacts if you enable hidden and system files there should be a .nk2 file in his profile somewhere this is the auto complete part when you start typing an address in a new mail window, does this still work? Or has that been reset or lost aswell

Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk

[Mr.James]

You might be able to recover the e-mails by converting the original .ost file to a .pst (after backing it up) and then recovering all the deleted e-mails from that...

There's plenty of utilities which claim to be able to do it for you... Don't know if any are free though.

[Over Carl]

When I've tried ost recovery tools, they've all been shit - even for pulling non deleted emails but I've never had any real money to spend. (by the way when you say deleted, I take it you mean deleted out of deleted items?)

The auto pst would probably be archive.pst within c:\doc and setts\user\local settings\application data\microsoft\outlook. Just click file open and it normally gets you there, although I'm certain evil said he checked for these.

Also just wondering why people reckon exchange is shit? Seems to work reasonably at my work but I don't really run our exchange server.

Edit: Was in a rush at work earlier and didn't read properly - I thought you meant at some locations as in some places/offices/pc's. Not too sure of any ideas tbh - unless you can ask him if he logged in anywhere else just before the problem and hasn't run outlook on the same pc since. If so then my trick could help.

[Red Phoenix]

the guy may have deleted them, give this a try - http://www.petri.co.il/using_outlook_2003_to_recover_deleted_items.htm

It has saved my bacon a few times, If they have hard deleted it, I.E Held Shift + Delete then they are pretty much screwed without a back up.

[Mr.James]

I mean get a utility to convert the .ost file to a .pst file. I'm thinking it will only rewrite the headers and the volume of data, including permanently deleted items, will still be in there.

Then use a hex editor to corrupt the index of the .pst file and use the scanpst.exe utility to rebuild the index and pulling back the permanently deleted items like in this guide here http://www.runpcrun.com/deleted-emails-outlook-pst

[Mr.James]

Another possibility would be to corrupt the .ost file in the same way as described in the above guide and run the scanost.exe utility on it... Face it .ost and .pst can't be that much different, why would MS redesign the wheel when psts have been around and working for years?