Outlook 2003 Outbox Mail Lost

[darantares]

Hey everyone,

We had a user here who's e-mail recently went down (I'm not sure why, I was not the tech to fix the initial problem). She had initially had some e-mails typed up and saved in her Outbox folder, to be sent out once a week for eight months. Her outlook profile got re-created and that fixed her initial e-mail problem, but now all of the messages that were pending in the Outbox are lost. I think the exact same thing happened to her last year, around the same time too, and she ended up having to re-type her e-mails. Any idea where they might have gone? Nothing else seems to be missing from her e-mail, just the three dozen or so messages that were in the Outbox.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

~Dan

[bobbyraw]

If her profile was recreated she would loose the .pst file that was associated to her account. you can try searching(search in hidden folders) on her PC for a *.pst file this will have all her recent email activity. once you find the file you can open outlook and import that pst file into outlook that will give her back what ever was saved. bare in mind if her email profile was being saved to a server then the administrator would have to find it and import it to her new profile.

If you use outlook on an exchange server MOST times your email profile is saved on the server. this give you access to all email no matter what pc you log onto when at work.

[darantares]

She didn't have a PST file associated with her account, at least with her XP profile or on her hard drive. All the e-mail here is saved on the server, so that the users can use webmail and such from home.

But your saying that it creates pst files on the Exchange Server for all users? I did a search on our e-mail server for .pst files and none came up. Or, for things like Outbox's does it automatically create a pst file (even a hidden one), and that's on the server or the users pc.

~Dan

[bobbyraw]

As i said if its on the server the admin would have to find that old profile (if it was backed up) and export the email setting. to the new profile.

[darantares]

IF it were backed up. So it's not something that happens automatically? Or is it possible to use an exchange tool to restore her mailbox to a previous date using the log files in the MDBDATA folder, using System Manater or would that restore everyone's? I'm an admin here, but Exchange Server is not my forte, and I've been learning as I go here in regards to exchange. I have quite a bit of experience using Outlook and administering accounts and such, but when it gets to the depths of the Server, we usually call out a contractor to come check it out. Here problem isn't that great (it's a more of an inconvenience thing for her more than anything) but this was the 2nd time this has happened, so I though I'd try to figure it out.

I did do a search on the Exchange Server for a *.pst file, and none came up, so I'm assuming that none of our 300 or so users are backed up that way. Some do have .pst files, but they're on their computer hard drives, used for storing excess e-mail. As far as I know, the only backup thing we have on the Server (other than the entire thing being backed up once a week to tape) is the MDBDATA folder which by now, is over 200 GB in size.

Please forgive my ignorance on this subject matter, and I do appreciate your help with this. I just wish I knew more about Exchange Server 03.

~Dan

[bobbyraw]

can you find the old profile that the used had before the new one was created.

[darantares]

Didn't find the old profile. What I did find was an .N2K file called Outlook which was the same name as her old e-mail profile, with a last modified date the same as the day her e-mail stopped working. It's location was C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

Is it possible this file contains those e-mails? It's 317KB in size. And how would one import this into Outlook, or get the e-mails? The few things I tried didn't work.

[bobbyraw]

a .N2K not sure what type of file that is but it will not do. So her old profile is lost from the server. do you have a set of backup. Don't know how often you backup so it might take some digging. for example the day the new profile was created can you go back a few days maybe one day and check you backup and see if the old profile is there. then import the settings to the new one. if this is just a inconvenience it might not be worth the time or trouble. tell her to type over the emails and save then to her network store so they can be backed up each time a back up is done. so if next year her profile get mess up you can recreate and then she will still have the back up of the emails

[hughv]

.N2K is the auto-complete file for her profile:
http://filext.com/file-extension/NK2
Look here for the pst file:
C:\Documents and Settings\user name\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

[bobbyraw]

Hugh he did a search and did not find her pst file more over when you are on a server MOST of the time the mails are left on the server for the simple reason of having access to them from any where. web mail or from any internal network PC

[hughv]

I know. Just hoping.
It seems odd that you guys don't use MS's Outlook backup software:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=8b081f3a-b7d0-4b16-b8af-5a6322f4fd01&displaylang=en
I assume it would work with a server.

[darantares]

Yea, no PST file anywhere to be found. I just think it's weird that everything else stays on the server when you re-create an Outlook profile (deleted, sent items, folders) but not the Outbox.