How-to recover deleted emails from Outlook 2007 for free

I created a video on my YouTube channel showing how you can recover deleted emails in Outlook 2007. I am pretty sure that the technique demonstrated will work with 2003 or 2010 as well but I've only tested it using Outlook 2007.

This technique will only work if you haven't compacted your PST file since the time you deleted the email you are trying to recover. The basic steps are to back up your PST file, then you use a HEX editor to "damage" the file by overwriting a small section of the PST file. You then use the great utility ScanPST.exe that comes with Microsoft Office to repair the PST file. When you then open the PST file in Outlook, the emails you have deleted since the last time you compacted will be in your inbox. If you have deleted a lot of emails since you last compacted it is probably a good idea to try this with a copy of your active PST file. Then you can just open it in Outlook alongside your main PST and just move the email you want recovered back into your main folder.

Thanks for sharing the info and the video.

It might make for a better demo video if you open the PST file in the HEX editor after you delete the e-mails from the PST file.

As it is now, you:
...open the PST file (with all of the test e-mails in it) using the HEX editor
...open the PST file using Outlook
...delete some e-mails
...empty the Deleted Items folder
...close Outlook (which writes to the PST file)
...damage the PST file via the HEX editor
...save the damaged PST file (with all of the test e-mails in it)
...run the SCANPST utility
...repair the PST file
...open the PST file via Outlook with all of the test e-mails in it.

So - it appears that the version of the PST file that you damaged/repaired still had the deleted e-mails in it because that version of the PST file was still in RAM via the Hex editor. I'm not familiar with the HEX editor that you show (I use PSPad). I know that there are some editors that will automatically reload a file that was changed by another app. I could not tell from the video if that is what happened. So I suggest that you not keep the version in RAM (via the editor) that contains all of the test e-mails.

My guess is that you have tested this using something like this order:
...open Outlook
...delete some e-mails
...empty the Deleted Items folder
...close Outlook
...open the PST file using the HEX editor
...damage the PST file via that HEX editor
...save the damaged PST file
...run the SCANPST utility
...repair the PST file
...open the PST file via Outlook
But it did not happen that way in the video.

I know how hard it is to do things in perfect order in a video :-(

You're welcome and thanks for the feedback.