The Case of the Vanishing E-mails

What should you do, in case all or some of your Microsoft Outlook emails disappear from view!!! – By Haresh Karamchandani

Yes! This is exactly what happened to me! One peaceful afternoon at the office, I just returned back from a client site and switched on my Dell XPS M1330 Laptop.

The first thing I normally do after my laptop comes on, is click on Microsoft Outlook to check my mails. I did so and to my shock and horror – I could not see ANY mails in my inbox. For a second I thought, maybe this is some other folder, I confirmed it was indeed my Inbox, but nothing, no emails!! It would show that I am supposed to have over 11,000 emails in the inbox, but in the view pane, all I could read was “No Items to View”.

Solution:

Microsoft Office comes with an inbuilt Inbox Repair Tool. But before that, I noticed that my McAfee Anti Virus programme was misbehaving. It would show that the computer is at risk due to the Firewall being turned off. I would turn on the Firewall, and a few seconds later the Firewall would go off and the computer would be at risk, automatically!! This was obviously a very able virus, that McAfee was not able to counter or quarantine.

I was so upset with Mr. McAfee. I had paid £30.00 during my last trip to the UK for this antivirus and I still had over 225 days subscription to go. This antivirus was not doing a good job at all.

I got down to using the Microsoft Repair Tool:

Step 1: Exit Outlook, if it is running.

Step 2: Go to My Computer> C Drive> Program Files> Microsoft Office> Office 12> SCANpst.

Step 3: Once you are in the SCANpst you will be prompted to enter the name of the file you would want to scan/repair. For this go to account settings in Outlook and under email accounts you will see Personal Folders and the Directory for Data Files. In my case it is: C:\Users\SCCI\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst

Copy this directory and paste it in the SCANpst box and click on Repair.

Now its time to relax, sit back, have a coffee, play a game of Settlers of Catan and Microsoft Office Repair Tool will do all the work. This process takes a few hours.

After the system has been scanned, Microsoft would ask you if you want to Back-up the repaired files. You must do this.

Once the repair is complete, restart your computer.

Now, if you go to your Outlook, Lo and Behold! All your emails would have been restored!!

Note: I have banished Mr. McAfee, removed him from my Program Files and now I have loaded Norton 360 Anti Virus. Hopefully Mr. Norton will be a better performer.