Saturday 5 July 2008

SBS - Dragged email to my Mailbox - Philip Elder folder ... where did it go?!?

This was probably one of the more interesting predicaments that we needed to research today.

A user accidentally drags their email onto the Mailbox - User Name root in Outlook that is Exchange integrated.

There is no real way to get to that email using any Outlook folder hierarchy.

So, what do we do?

Well, if we are running Windows Vista, we can click the start button and type a few of the email's details to bring it up in the search results. From there, it is a matter of right clicking on the email in the search results and clicking on "Move to Folder" to place it back into a regular email folder.

If we are not running Windows Vista, and the Desktop Search feature does not find it on Windows XP, then we need to build an Advanced Find in Outlook. The neat thing about the Advanced Find is that we don't need to know any keywords. We need only click the Browse button and select the Mailbox - User Name folder along and not Search Subfolders. The search will happen quite quickly and we will be able to highlight them all and right click on them to move them to another folder.

This is the search result with a keyword:

Found Email in IPM_SUBTREE Folder

Note that they are found in a folder called the IPM_SUBTREE.

Ultimately, what lead us to the solution was having all email in Outlook read, right clicking on one and marking it as Unread, then dragging it over the Mailbox - User Name and letting go.

The Search Folder for Unread Mail showed one! Click on the Unread Mail Search Folder and voila: We have our missing email in the above IPM_SUBTREE folder. We realized after the fact that the Windows Vista method also reveals this folder ... if we have the Folder column enabled in the search results!

With that information in hand we were able to find Gilg's Weblog post: Finding lost mail in your top level Outlook/Exchange root that pointed us to creating the Advanced Find in Outlook. We restructured the find with no keywords and having it point only to the Mailbox root to discover any items there.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Philip,
Are you refering to the very root of the Outlook Mailbox? That shows the Outlook Today page?
If so there is a very easy way to get your mail back.
Right click the root of the folder, goto properties.
You will see the second tab - Homepage.
DeSelect the Show Homepage
This will show the root of the mailbox as any other folder in Outlook, listing your messages, you can then copy these to the folder you wish.

Hope this helps,
David

Philip Elder Cluster MVP said...

David,

Awesome! :D

Sometimes it is just a matter of trying to figure out the right words to use when searching for a solution.

There is always ... well, almost always ... a better way to do something. ;)

Excellent ... thank you very much for that!

Philip