Recovering a lost Outlook message
Reader Susan Malloy has lost some important email and can’t seem to retrieve it. She writes:
I use Microsoft Outlook 2011 as my email client. I was recently searching for an invoice emailed to me so that I could add it to an expense report. I know Outlook once had it but when I search within Outlook the message doesn't appear. Oddly enough, when I perform a Finder search, the message is there. Yet I can’t open it. What can I do?
First, take a deep breath. (And, if you swing that way, a stiff drink, as this one’s a brain buster.) Here’s what happened:
It’s very likely that between the time you received that message and later searched for it, something happened to Outlook’s database—you saw a message that the database was corrupted and needed to be rebuilt. (An issue I encounter on a nearly weekly basis.) You dutifully rebuilt the database. During that time, thinking that you had a copy in Outlook, using your iPhone or other iOS device you deleted the message from your IMAP account so that it was impossible to re-download it.
Because of that rebuild, the current version of the Outlook database doesn’t believe the message exists. However, the previous version of the database is aware of the message and has actually stored it. That’s why it appears when you search for it using the Finder.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
http://www.macworld.com/article/2029414/recovering-a-lost-outlook-message.html
