[DISCLAIMER: This post is long because it is a long story and I think that the problem is quite a unique or rare one, so please bear with me]
Outlook version of client's machine: 2007
Outlook version on my machine which I was diagnosing the issue on: Office 365
Hey,
I was working on an old laptop that had a fair amount of bloatware, and at some point the laptop needed a restart to continue the procedure. My "client" was closing Outlook so that the restart could continue, and during this the client was presented
with error message of some kind, something like "could not be found", and Ifeel as if the word ".pst" was included somewhere in there, but I am not sure of this. They closed the error message and that caused the same error to pop up, but this time I think they clicked "ignore" or something similar to that.
This allowed the computer to restart.
Once the computer switched back on again, I continued the procedure. My time for that day was up, and I hadn't finished cleaning the computer, and so I left for the day, only to get a phone call the next day that all of their emails had dissappeared.
I was completely shocked by this because I hadn't touched Outlook or it's folders, only removing obvious programs like the "Bing Toolbar" etc.
My client told my that when they opened the computer (this is the next day) Outlook opened up with error messages, and so they followed the prompts, and it was after this that they were greeted with an empty Outlook. I theorised that maybe the original .PST
file was deleted or not being used, and so I checked the usual places and noticed that there wasn't a big .pst file there. I ran Recuva to try and locate the .PST file and found several, but only one that was 2GB in size. I imported it but this file was an
old file, not having the recent emails. I dug around more and found a .PST file in the "My Documents" directory, 3GB in size. I was aware that files over 2GB were said to be very... volatile let's say, known to corrupt sometimes, but I'm not sure
if this applies to the newer Outlook .PST files that are said to use Unicode instead of the ANSI of older .PST files. Anyway, I import the 3GB file, and again, this ones "Inbox" folder only dates back to the end of 2017, yet the "Sent Items"
folder has emails from March of 2018.
I run SCANPST.EXE on the 3GB file, and it notes that there are errors (I believe it was 25 errors in the 19,000 or so entries). I repair, import, and again same results. Inbox of 11,000 emails, Deleted Items of 4,000, and some other amount in Sent Items,
but all of the other folders are empty. Inbox stops at December 2017, Deleted Items at 2015, and Sent Items at March 2018.
Here is what I tried doing:
- Opening it in 3rd party utilities (not using the paid versions, just to see if they would detect the missing emails)
- using Microsoft's 2GB PST truncator tool that I managed to find on the internet somewhere (which didn't let me truncate because the file wasn't big enough apparently)
- I went out of my depth by opening the .PST in a hex editor and trying to remove chunks manually, but that never worked, as SCANPST.EXE would just crash/stop/close suddenly after completing phase 8 of the checking, and by foregoing the .PST repaire and trying
to import into Outlook would just cause Outlook to crash. (Note that SCANPST logs would show something about BBT entries not matching or something along those lines, understandably as I was deleting random chunks in the middle, hoping to try and get it under
the 2GB or even 1GB mark)
I'm really stuck as to what to do, because not only was the disappearance of the emailsextremely unusual, but so was the results of importing the emails. The latest emails should date to May or June of 2018, and thereshould have been items in the other folders.
If anyone has any clue as to what is going on, I would really appreciate the help, and if you need any other questions, please just ask, I'm ready to answer them.
Thank you in advance,
Alakbar