Member Avatar for gutset628

Hi,
I was recently posed a question by a customer. This person has an extensive folder structure in outlook 03. She somehow lost a folder but definatley did not delete it.
It appears that she accidentally dragged and dropped the folder into another folder somewhere in her directory tree and could not find it.
I attempted to make use of the find feature but it only seams to search for files and not folders.
Also when using the "search folder" feature this actually will locate files that are in the folder and even show the file being located in the folder but in no way points to where in the directory tree the folder it "physicly" located.
Just to let you know, with time the customer was able to locate the folder herself but only but digging through every folder she had until she happened upon the one that was lost.
Sorry for all that. My question is simple. IS THERE A BETTER WAY?
I felt a little silly not being able to give by customer a better answer then to just take her time and dig for it.

Thanks in advance!
~Gabe

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Short answer: you can usually avoid blind digging.

Outlook’s message search will tell you which folder contains a message, but it does not (by default) show the full nested folder path in the folder tree. Add the “In Folder” column to search/Advanced Find results so you can see the folder name for each hit, then jump straight to that folder in the left pane. This is the quickest, non-programming fix for a folder that was accidentally dragged somewhere. ()

If you need the actual folder path (or want to find a folder by name across many PST/ stores) a small Outlook VBA routine is the simplest, reliable option — no PST copies, no extra indexing tools. A macro can recurse every store and either: (a) dump every folder.FolderPath into a new message you can Ctrl+F through, or (b) locate the first folder whose name matches and set ActiveExplorer.CurrentFolder to it. That approach implements the Outlook object model directly and is what people use when the GUI search isn’t enough. (slipstick.com)

Example (paste into Alt+F11 -> Insert Module, then run ListFoldersToMail or call FindFolderByName from the Immediate window):

Sub ListFoldersToMail()
    Dim ns As Outlook.NameSpace, root As Outlook.MAPIFolder
    Dim outMsg As Outlook.MailItem, bodyText As String
    Set ns = Application.GetNamespace("MAPI")
    For Each root In ns.Folders
        RecurseFolder root, bodyText
        bodyText = bodyText & vbCrLf
    Next
    Set outMsg = Application.CreateItem(olMailItem)
    outMsg.Body = bodyText
    outMsg.Display
End Sub

Sub RecurseFolder(fld As Outlook.MAPIFolder, ByRef s As String)
    Dim subf As Outlook.MAPIFolder
    s = s & fld.FolderPath & vbCrLf
    For Each subf In fld.Folders
        RecurseFolder subf, s
    Next
End Sub

Notes: enable macros temporarily to run this (or run from a trusted machine), back up the PST before major changes, and only use PST/repair tools if the file is actually corrupted — repair utilities fix structural corruption, they do not “locate” a folder that was simply moved. (learn.microsoft.com)

Thanks to for the clear problem description; was right to think about the Outlook API — the VBA route above is the lightweight, practical way to implement that idea without extra software.

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Member Avatar for gutset628

I just want to give this post 1 bump to the top before I just let it go.
Does anyone have ANY suggestion for this?

Thanks
~Gabe

Member Avatar for Member #46692

This sounds like it should be a basic feature doesn't it?!

If it's not. The only other thing I could think of doing would be to copy the folder structure (.pst) and recurse through each directory looking for that name.

It might be easy since in visual studio you have the ability to access outlook api functions. I'll have a look into this...

The only other thing I could find related to this was something called "search folders" but it seems unrelated.

Member Avatar for Suspishio

You can try a popular Outlook recovery tool called Advanced Outlook Repairo repair your PST file. It is a powerful tool to recover messages, folders and other objects from corrupt or damaged Microsoft Outlook PST files.

Yes we know all that because you're populating so many posts with this advert.

But will the $250 outlay solve THIS question? Yes/No?

Member Avatar for HBMAX

I had the same problem.
And I found the folder finally.
There is only one way.
Install Google desktop if you don't have then after Google desktop done indexing the search for your lost folder name you will see many emails which is in that folder then and below each email it will show the full directory of the folder in outlook.

Enjoy

HBMAX

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