Deleted Items folder missing from Outlook 2007 / Exchange OWA

did you try opening outlook with the /resetfolders switch

I am not sure how that affects owa though

How about using the PFDavadmin tool?

You can connect and select user mailboxes right click on the user mailbox and show deleted folders and go to the top of the info store and see if the deleted is highlighted in red.

the tool is here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=635BE792-D8AD-49E3-ADA4-E2422C0AB424&displaylang=en

@demazter

Thanks for the reply.  I performed your suggestion on Client2 by shutting down the computer, restarting, then launching Outlook with that command line switch but there was no effect.  Any other ideas?

Please note that this problem is also present when using Client3; Outlook Web Access.

i would either try mfcmapi or the pfdavadmin tool

@badgermike

Thank you for your reply.  I downloaded the pfdavadmin tool and ran it on the server.  I connected to All Mailboxes using the Administrator account and was able to see the Deleted Items folder for the user in question, but it wasn't in red or anything.  As this is my first time using this utility if there is anything else I should be doing with this utility that I am not doing please let me know.  I have attached a screenshot in case it is helpful.

apparently the utility is showing deleted items as not deleted -

when you right click on the top of information store for that account and then choose show deleted subfolders you would probably see deleted in red in which you could highlight and recover it.

...this is strange

it may be hidden somehow and mfcmapi can update the folder

@endital1097

Thank you for your reply too.  I downloaded the mfcmapi utility from CodePlex and I think I may have found the problem if I'm understanding what I'm looking at.  Here is what I have done so far:

I downloaded and ran the utility from Client2.  I clicked Session and then Logon and Display Store Table.  I double clicked the exchange store which opened another window for Mailbox - Gidi Cohen.  I then walked the tree from Root Container > Top of Information Store > Deleted Items noticing the properties of each folder shown on the right hand side as I navigated the tree.  

Each folder has a long list of properties associates with it but the Deleted Items folder has NO properties shown on the right hand side at all.  All of the deleted folders underneath Deleted Items have properties, but Deleted Items itself is blank.

Have you heard of anything like this before?  Where should I go from here?

Have you run office diagnostics? Help - detect and repair.

I

you may need to use this utility to delete the deleted items folder and create a new one
i would test it on a test mailbox first to ensure it doesn't have any ill effects
i am looking at this with a test mailbox now

i don't think these utilities are going to assist
do you now if a repair was done against this exchange database (eseutil /p)
you may need to run an isinteg against the database

@endital1097

To our knowledge, no utilities have been against the Exchange server database besides its normal automated utilities such as online defragmentation.  What would you suggest running?  (which utilities and command line parameters, etc.)  I'll do it tonight off-hours as we can't dismount the store during the day and report back tomorrow on the status.

@badgermike

No, we have not ran a detect and repair in Microsoft Outlook but to my knowledge this only looks for problems with the installed copy of Outlook, not problems on the Exchange store.  As this problem persists across two different Outlook versions on two different workstations and OWA I didn't think this would help.  If you think otherwise though just let me know and I'll run it on Client2.

isinteg -s servername -fix -test alltests
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/301460

Unfortunately everyone needed to work late last night, specifically on e-mail and then didn't want us interrupting last night's brick-level backup either so the DB maintenance got put off until tonight.  I will update again tomorrow after the DB maintenance has been completed.

We were given the same delay excuse yesterday saying we'd have to wait until today to perform maintenance.  As I'm starting to think this is going to happen each night until the weekend I'm going to hold off on updating this thread until the maintenance is completed.  I'll re-post in 1 - 4 days when completed.

Last night we were able to successfully run isinteg -s servername -fix -test alltests on both stores of the exchange server.  Watching it's output it does appear to have fixed a small number of errors, unfortunately the Deleted Items folder is still missing in Outlook/OWA.

Any additional ideas?

a mailbox move is not supposed to move corruption, so if you have a second database you may want to consider moving the mailbox

No second database, we're running Small Business Server 2003 so everything is on one box/one database.  Anything else?  Is there any feasible way to manually setup the properties on the deleted items folder using mfcmapi or is that just asking for trouble?

If ultimately we can't fix this mailbox and I just have to erase it and create a new one then re-import all of the messages into a new box, is there anyway to get the items currently in the deleted items folder out?  We have daily backups of the entire Exchange DB but I'd rather not go that route if possible because it's a pain in the ***.  This office doesn't have brick-level backups of the mailboxes - only the entire DB.

Using MFCmapi I have been able to move everything out of the Deleted Items folder into a secondary "Recovered Deleted Items" folder I created.  At this point I can export everything out of Outlook into a PST, erase the exchange mailbox, recreate it, then import from the PST using Outlook.  Is this the recommended course of action or is there something else left that we can try before going to this extreme?

The experts appear to have abandoned this question.
I attempted to use MFCmapi to erase the entire deleted items folder so that isinteg may be better able to repair the problem but as I expected I was not allowed to delete that folder.  Having no other ideas, I backed up the entire Exchange mailbox to a PST file, erased the mailbox from the user account, purged it from Exchange, then recreated a new mailbox for the user and re-imported the contents from the PST file.

Unfortunately this did require erasing and recreating the Exchange configuration on every device that was connected to that mailbox as it knew it was no longer connected to the same mailbox.  As such, I needed to reconfigure that users desktop, laptop and iPhone to restore connectivity.