Recover hard deleted mail?

[Cider]

This chick went and hard deleted (shaft + del) in outlook 2007. I tried outlook dumpster but nothing? Anyway I can do this? Mail is stored locally to the machine. XP Pro Sp3.

Thanks.

[instronics]

Mhm.. i usually dont advice links or software that i have not been able to try or test. I dont have any spare PC at the moment to install windows on. And i dont have any existing windows either. But give this a try:

http://www.officerecovery.com/freeundelete/

and / or

http://ntfsundelete.com/downloads/

Let me know if this does indeed help you so i can know to advise these to others safely in future.

Cheers.

[Cider]

Looks good however the plugin for outlook still does not retrieve hard deleted mail!

I did a system restore thinking it would roll back to the old PST file but they still weren't there, i'm still 50/50 on that if a system restore should retrieve an old PST file.

[Cheap Scotch Ron]

As long as the PST file has not been compressed, the messages are still in the file.
Use scanpst.exe to repair the file. You can corrupt the file by using a hex editor.
Dont forget to back it up before attempting this.

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;287497

[instronics]

Duh... i also forgot something else.

Its worth a try atleast. For example.. I use thunderbird. I get my mail from gmail. I have made the settings to forward all my mail to my thunderbird client.. but in gmail to also save a copy of each file on the server itself.

Maybe... you can still find what you are looking for on the mail server itself.

Cheers.

[Cider]

No mail is stored on the server. I don't know why though. We have 13 users with like over a terabyte of space free on our server? Why cant mail get stored there? Will it bog the network down?

[instronics]

There could be a number of reasons for that. Maybe the policy from the admin or just misconfigurations. The client can setup (i think in outlook) to download mail from the server and to NOT delete it. It could also be a privacy issue. But this is going offtopic about the mail server. It was just a thought i had when i accessed my mail online with a web browser.. i saw that all my downloaded mails have a copy there too.

So back to recovery of the original lost files then. I must admitt that i have never looked into recovery that since i never really lost anything of value (lucky me) but for example on the BT3 (backtrack) cd there are numerous programs for recovery. I have no real clue of their usage but maybe something like that might be of help. Reason why i mention this particular CD is due it having a rather good reputation for its software collection and functionality.

I hope you manage to save the files you are looking for. Before proceeding with recovery tools though.. i advice sou to make an image backup of the current-is situation just incase.

Good luck.

[Cider]

The client can setup (i think in outlook) to download mail from the server and to NOT delete it.

Yip it is setup like that , I am 2nd in charge and it is very informal here so no policies etc.

It was just one of the workers whom shift deleted a folder in outlook with all the stored emails. What a tit.

Anyhow system restore didn't work - can someone explain this to me?

http://www.officerecovery.com/freeundelete/

and / or

The free undelete recovered all the files deleted on the OS which was cool but didnt help on the mail side.

[westin]

I think system restore only restores programs and settings, not data. That way if you have worked on several documents, and need to restore back to a previous date, you won't lose your work. I may be mistaken, but I was under the impression that it worked this way.

[Cheap Scotch Ron]

did you try scanpst.exe on the pst file?