Tracing Emails in Microsoft Outlook.

[morganlefay]

I have seen outlook profiles be come corrupt for various reasons.....usually due to size of the mailbox.

Seeing you mentioned pst files...I am assuming Outlook...not Outlook Express here

What is the server Outlook is connecting to...is it just a POP or an Exchange etc?

Check the filters and views the user has setup...I have had a user filter her mail and all of a sudden mail wasnt "there"....and once I reset the views to default and removed the filters...voila..the mail was there...sounds like this may be the issue.

Outlook 2003 has has many an update to the junk mail filters........make sure you are up to date on the patches.

Really sounds like a view thing to me though

Or you can try creating the users profile on another machine.....see if it works there?

Or....... create a new outlook profile on the machine

From Outlook I export the mailbox to a pst file at the root of C:\ and call it backup.pst
(include all sub folders...this is VERY important)

I then delete the profile and look for the users pst file...usually in the users profile\documents and settings folder......(really depends on the version of outlook and windows) and delete that pst file.... a search for *.pst will usually finds the other pst file....sorry cant remember where it is stored right now...do not delete the backup.pst you just created at C:\

I believe pst files are considered hidden\system...so you may want to adjust your search to include those

reboot

I then recreate the profile in outlook and import the backup pst ...unless of course I am connecting to an exchange server...I should not need the backup.pst as the mailbox really resides there..just needs to synchronize....backup.pst is there....just in case..all else fails

A new profile has fixed outlook many times for me.....

Again..what version of outlook...and what server??

MLF

[FanacooL]

morganlefay

Lots of questions :-) anyways here it goes....

You are right it is Microsoft Outlook which create the pst file for emails.

Check the filters and views the user has setup...I have had a user filter her mail and all of a sudden mail wasnt "there"....and once I reset the views to default and removed the filters...voila..the mail was there...sounds like this may be the issue.

Well there ain't any such filter, as i have already mentioned few of the routine correspondence emails got missed and after 9:15 no issue was there, neither user nor me changed any setting of the emails.

Or....... create a new outlook profile on the machine

Did not think of doing it. hmhm seems to be a good idea. New profiles has fixed issues for me too.

Outlook 2003, mail server Mdaemon 8.1

Now since the user asked his collegues to send all those emails in which he was copy so now he is ok with it and emails are coming perfectly alright.

But for future i will not forget to make a new profile and see if things went ok

[coroner]

You have probably already had a look but I do not recall seeing it in any posts above.
There is a recover deleted emails option in outlook. I cant see exactly where atm as I dont have office installed. But you might be able to find them in there if the user deleted them.

However if he used the Shift+delete combination this deletes them properly and they do not appear in there.

All depends on the users skillbase if they are trying to sabotage your operations

[cgkanchi]

If the problem hasn't been solved yet, have you considered that someone else may have logged into the guy's pc and downloaded and deleted his emails. Also, what happens when you send him a test email from an external account? What about from an internal account? Do both emails get to his inbox? On an even more sinister note, is it possible that someone used either IP/MAC spoofing or some kind of a MiTM (Man in The Middle) attack to get the email as it traveled between your server and the client? What about ARP spoofing (unlikely, I know)?

Cheers,
cgkanchi