Outlook 2007 archiving incorrectly

I have been using Outlook 2007 for years and am used to it asking if I want to archive all messages older than 90 days. It has always given me access to my archived messages at the base of the folder tree however, as of 3 weeks ago I can only access messages from 2009, 2010, and 2011. Everything after that is missing and of course it is causing me serious problems.

I note in my backup folder there are several backups all named archive1.pst. The archive1 file that appears to be being used is 2.3 Gb in size but there is another folder which was last modified on May 19th that is 5 Gb in size. My guess is that my more recent messages are stored in that or a combination of the 2 files but how can I access this larger file?

I was thinking to just import it but figured to check here first in case I do any damage.

Thanks for your reply Ranger4. Regretfully, Microsoft does not provide info on how to restore archived items. There is a link on the page in the second link you provided that purports to cover restoration but when you view that page there is absolutely nothing about restoring archived data.

The first link tells you how to open a data file. I did exactly as they said an attempted to open the 5 Gb file but it said "There are no items to show in this view. I went to the bottom of the tree and tried opening all 3 archived folders but there are no mails newer than 2011.

Checking my auto-archive options I note that auto-deletion of expired items was checked. I have now unchecked that however, there is a second option for permanent deletion of expired items which was not checked. Reading MS's info on the auto-delete option suggests that deletion is only supposed to happen in outlook.pst otherwise known as the current view. It goes on to say that deleted items will NOT be deleted from the archive1.pst file and that this must be done manually, if required. So, if that is the case, all my messages after 2011 should still be there ...somewhere.

I think the only way I am going to be able to solve this is to backup all existing files and then attempt to import the larger archive file. If it damages anything I can always roll back to the way it was before.

Sorry for the delay in my reply Ranger4. I tried the program you suggested however the repaired archive file was 25% smaller than the original. It is possible that the original was bloated for some unknown reason but logic makes me worry that a large amount of data has been lost so I'm too nervous to import it or to replace the original.

Yes, I can definitely do that. :)