Email has today become one of the most important tools to keep in touch with the world. It can be used by an individual for both personal as well as business purposes, like communicating with clients and customers. However, there is always a chance of accident everywhere and sudden deletion of emails from the Inbox folder in Outlook is not new. Now let’s look at how we can prevent such accidents from happening and recover the lost data.
At time while using you Outlook email client you may have experienced a situation where your Inbox has mysteriously gone missing or has emptied by itself. In most cases messages from the Inbox folder in Outlook client can be deleted by the following way:
- Accidentally pressing the shift+delete key together while viewing the message
- Using Internet Access Protocol 4 (IMAP4) while using Outlook client
Moreover, the corruption of PST file can also render loss of data from the Inbox folder in Outlook. This usually happens whenever the stored data crosses the mailbox maximum capacity of 2GB. Outlook recovery is not a very complicated process as many people thing it to be. The most common problem faced by a lot of user is the loss of data due to accidental deletion or corruption of the PST file.
The recovery of emails from your Inbox depends on what kind of deletion it is i.e., is it a hard deletion (permanent deletion) or soft deletion. Soft deletion occurs when the accidentally deleted items remain in the ‘Deleted Items’ folder in your Outlook client. If such form of deletion occurs you can get back the data by transferring it to your Inbox. This makes the Outlook recovery process much easier and the data is left unharmed. However, the real problem comes when the items from the Inbox are hard deleted i.e., the items do not appear in the ‘Deleted Items’ folder and in order to recover the deleted files you have to take the help of ‘Inbox Recovery Tool’ or scanpst.exe. If the data is recovered by this integrated tool then it’s well and good. However, if it unsuccessful in recovering the data you might need the help of third party Outlook recovery tool.
To recover the deleted emails from the Inbox folder you need to first find the scanpst.exe tool which usually remains hidden. For this you have to open the ‘Search’ function in your Windows computer and then type scanpst.exe and after a few minutes the search function will display this tool after which you need to double click on it. This will trigger the Outlook recovery process which will eventually help you to recover the lost or corrupt data.
The recovery of emails also depends on the Exchange Server settings. If the Exchange Server is set to save deleted emails then it is easy to recover the emails that are deleted by accident. Outlook 2007 has this setting by default and you do not need to customize it. However, if you are using an earlier version of Outlook then you need to make changes to the registry. Moreover, you can use Microsoft Exchange server 2000, 2003 and 2007 account to recover deleted emails by hitting the ‘fix it for me’ button which makes the server retain copies of emails that are deleted by accident.
Most problems associated with Outlook are usually taken care of by the integrated Inbox Recovery Tool or scanpst.exe and you will rarely require any external help to fix the problem. However, if the problem is beyond the healing capacity of the Inbox Recovery Tool and you are unable to get back the deleted emails then you can take the help of DataNumen Outlook Repair tool which is very effective for dealing with such situations.