Windows 7: help! my emails have all disappeared!

Kari, richc46 thanks very much for your help.

I'll forget about the lost emails it's not the end of the world. I've deleted my email acounts in outlook because It wouldn't repair them so I've set them up afresh as pop3s and sorted the problem of mail getting left on the server.

Thanks very much for the help.

richc46 It won't let me give u anymore rep, says I have to spread it around...

Ugh, sorry to hear that.

Sounds like Outlook was in "live web" mode and all your email was on the server only, never DLed.

As the lines blur between what is on your machine and what is on the web (or the "Cloud" soon) it's going to be more and more confusing as to where your data REALLY is.

I hope that in the future there would be more of an indication that X is stored locally and Y is stored on someone's server. But I expect this kind of thing to become more and more common (and more important to watch out for) as we get hit by all the grand new ideas about web enabled everything in the near future

Hi there
Outlook 2010 especially with IMAP has a few problems -- what I suggest you do is find another computer that has OUTLOOK 2007 or earlier and logon to your email account again.

You'll probably find ALL your email is still on the server -- the delete function doesn't actually work properly in Outlook 2010 -- it appears stuff has gone but it's still left on the server. You can't actually see it again in Outlook 2010 but it will be visible again in 2007 / earlier.

This is how your mailbox can get full even when you think you've deleted stuff.

BTW if you do logon again with outlook 2007 / earlier you can download a little program from Microsoft called pfbackup.exe which backs up your OUTLOOK folders to ANY directory you care to use -- you can then re-open these if you re-install office / windows etc etc.

I had to give up with Outlook 2010 -- however the rest of the office 2010 suite looks fine.

BTW I was running the 64 bit version of Office 2010 on Windows 7 x-64 enterprise, and using IMAP.

Cheers

jimbo

Your verbal gratitude is worth much more than rep. I know that you truly appreciate the efforts of everyone at the Forum.